The Modi government has blocked 2,388 websites for objectionable content in 2018, nearly double the 1,329 websites it blocked in 2017. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology informed Parliament last Wednesday, 12 December, that the websites were blocked under rule 7 of Section 69A of the Information and Technology Act, 2000.

“The number of social media URLs blocked/removed during the last 3 years (sic) under the provisions of rule 7 section 69A of the IT Act 2000 are 587, 964, 1329 and 2388 for 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 (up to 31.12.2018) (sic) respectively,” Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology S. S. Ahluwalia said in reply to a parliamentary question by BJP MP Janardhan Singh Sigriwal.

The reply also revealed that the National Crime Records Bureau stopped collecting data on the number of arrests made under Section 66A of the IT Act since 2016. Section 66A is a controversial provision that criminalised sending ‘offensive’ messages online, which the Supreme Court struck down in 2015 for being too ambiguous.