Twitter has been accused of bowing to authorities strain in India by blocking scores of distinguished journalists, politicians and activists from its platform in current weeks.

The Indian authorities issued notices to Twitter to take away individuals within the aftermath of an web shutdown in Punjab during the search for a fugitive Sikh separatist leader.

Twitter agreed to dam greater than 120 accounts, together with the Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh, the Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, a number of journalists and an Indian MP. Twitter additionally blocked the deal with of the BBC’s Punjabi bureau.

Jaskaran Sandhu, the Toronto-based co-founder of Baaz News, an outlet centered on the Sikh diaspora, acquired an electronic mail from Twitter on 21 March that mentioned his account had been withheld in India. In the e-mail, seen by the Guardian, no particular tweet or exercise by Sandhu was cited by Twitter for its motion.

“The Indian government has made it a norm to take draconian measures and crack down on dissent coming from Sikh or other minority communities,” Sandhu mentioned. “Twitter’s actions are just another example [that imply] civil liberties and democratic rights are under attack.”

“My entire account, not any tweet, has been banned in India. It is blanket censorship. And there is absolute silence from Twitter on this.”

Freedom House, a US-based nonprofit organisation, has accused the prime minister Narendra Modi’s authorities of “driving India toward authoritarianism” and in 2021 downgraded India’s standing from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’.

India, the third-largest marketplace for Twitter after the US and Japan, is proving to be one among its largest challenges. Responding to a tweet about censorship in India, Elon Musk, who accomplished a takeover of Twitter in October and calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, tweeted: “It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things.”

Social media platforms together with Twitter had been seen as one of many remaining avenues for Indian individuals to specific dissent, after conventional media homes largely caved in to strain from the federal government to toe its line.

Twitter sued the federal government in July over takedown orders, after the federal government launched laws in 2021 geared toward regulating each type of digital content material, together with on-line information, social media, and streaming platforms and empowering itself to take away content material it deemed “objectionable”.

Prateek Waghre, the coverage director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, mentioned a lot of the content material being withheld was reportage that didn’t painting the federal government in a optimistic gentle. “There is no contention. It is just absurd,” he added.

Since his takeover, Musk has reportedly slashed Twitter’s workforce by 90% in India. “There is a question if Twitter still has people to vet these requests,” Waghre mentioned. “The question is also on the willingness of a pushback, which has certainly reduced [since Musk takeover].”

Raqib Hameed Naik, the founding father of Hindutva Watch, a US-based web site that tracks hate crimes in India, described the state of affairs as “very grim”.

“Big tech has completely surrendered to the authoritarian regime of PM Narendra Modi,” he mentioned. “Twitter’s conduct in India sets a worrying trend of silencing media, critics and dissenters worldwide.”

Sandhu mentioned he was not optimistic about India’s capability to “uphold minimal requirements for a healthy democracy”, describing the system as “rotten to the core”.