Romantic X users.The Indian government has issued executive orders to X mandating that X block more than 8,000 accounts in India. Failure to do so might result in severe fines and the incarceration of the company’s local staff. Among the directives are requests to restrict entry in India to — May 8, 2025 Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs)

The Indian government has often not identified specific postings from an account have broken local laws in India. According to the statement, “we did not receive any evidence or justification to block the accounts for a significant number of accounts.”

We will only withhold the designated accounts in India in order to abide with the directives. That procedure has already started. But we don’t agree with the expectations of the Indian government. In addition to being needless, blocking whole accounts violates the basic right to free expression and amounts to censorship of both current and future material.

Maintaining the platform’s accessibility in India is essential to Indians’ access to knowledge, but this is not an easy choice.

Making these executive orders public, in our opinion, is crucial for openness since withholding information may lead to arbitrary decision-making and impede accountability. However, we are unable to publish the executive orders at this time owing to legal constraints.

X is investigating every legal option open to the business. Indian law limits X’s capacity to fight these executive directives in court, unlike users who are based there. Nonetheless, we urge any users affected by these blocking orders to approach the courts for the proper remedy.

According to X, they notified the impacted users of the steps in compliance with our policy. The Indian government may also be contacted by affected users at cyberlaw@meity.gov.in.

The accounts of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party, have been suspended in India due to the increased tensions between the two countries after a fatal terrorist incident in Pahalgam.