The Congress party on Thursday accused social media platform X (formerly Twitter) of receiving a directive from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to remove a video of Home Minister Amit Shah’s remarks about Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. The party claimed the video violated Indian laws, but X informed them no action had been taken on the post.
Congress leader Supriya Shrinate revealed that the official party handle and leaders, including herself, received an email on Wednesday evening, stating the video violated certain unspecified laws. The email, sent from X’s legal department on December 18, referred to a complaint from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under MHA, requesting the removal of the content.
The tweet in question featured a 12-second clip of Shah’s speech in the Rajya Sabha on December 17, where he remarked, “These days, it is fashionable to say Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. The clip compared with the full, unaltered 1-hour 32-minute video of Shah’s speech available on the official Sansad TV YouTube channel showed no edits.
The text accompanying Congress’s tweet criticized Shah’s statement, accusing BJP and RSS leaders of harboring hatred for Ambedkar and calling for an apology from Shah.X’s email stated that it had not taken any action on the reported content yet.
While Shrinate claimed that MHA and MeitY had intervened to remove the tweets, HT learned that MeitY had not issued any blocking orders under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, which typically applies to content related to national security and public order. Legal experts suggested that there appears to be no clear legal violation in the tweet.
This incident is not the first time I4C has sought the removal of content linked to Shah. In May, during the general elections, I4C recommended blocking the Jharkhand Congress account for posting a doctored video of Shah. The account remains blocked, marking the first use of Section 69A to block a political party’s social media account during elections.
Despite allegations of censorship, the case underscores ongoing debates about social media regulation and government intervention in digital content.
 of receiving a directive from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to remove a video of Home Minister Amit Shah's remarks about Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. The party claimed the video violated Indian laws, but X informed them no action had been taken on the post.){kind=link}