X on Tuesday said that it had been directed by the Indian government to block more than 2,300 accounts, including the official handles of global news agency Reuters. The order, issued on July 3 under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. “Non-compliance risked criminal liability. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology demanded immediate action- within one hour- without providing justification, and required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice,” a post by X’s Global Government Affairs team read..

Following public backlash, the government later asked X to restore access to the @Reuters and @ReutersWorld accounts, the platform added.

The post further read, “We are deeply concerned about ongoing press censorship in India due to these blocking orders. X is exploring all legal options available. Unlike users located in India, X is restricted by Indian law in its ability to bring legal challenges against these executive orders. We urge affected users to pursue legal remedies through the courts.”

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Govt responds to X’s allegations

According to ANI, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s spokesperson has responded to X’s allegation. “The Government has not issued any fresh blocking order on 3rd July, 2025 and has no intention to block any prominent international News Channels including Reuters and Reuters World. The moment Reuters and Reuters World were blocked on X platform in India, immediately the government wrote to ‘X’ to unblock them. The Government continuously engaged and vigorously pursued with ‘X’ from the late night of 5th July 2025. ‘X’ has unnecessarily exploited technicalities involved around the process and didn’t unblock the URLs,” the spokeperson said. “However, after lot of follow-up on hourly basis, X has finally unblocked Reuters and other URLs after 9 pm on 6th July 2025. They took more than 21 hours to unblock Reuters,” the spokesperson added.

The government of India recently denied any role in the suspension of Reuters X account. The Centre on July 6 said, “There is no requirement from the Government of India to withhold Reuters handle. We are continuously working with X to resolve the problem.”