New Delhi: At the stroke of the midnight hour on 6 July, the primary and world ‘X’ handles of the Reuters news agency were “withheld” in India “in response to a legal demand”. It is unclear at this time whether the restriction was initiated at the request of a competent Indian court or the government, since more than 30 active secondary Reuters handles on X (formerly Twitter) can still be accessed by users in India.
The news agency, which employs 2,600 journalists across 165 countries, is yet to issue an official statement in response to the restriction. Reuters is the news and media division of the Thomson Reuters Corporation, headquartered in Toronto.
India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), too, has yet to address the restriction through official channels.
The Reuters news website can still be accessed in India at this time.
In previous instances of X restricting access to accounts in India, ‘in response to a legal demand’, the platform with upwards of 20 million Indian users has issued statements through its Global Government Affairs handle.
For instance, on 8 May, 2025, X issued a statement saying it had “received executive orders from the Indian government” requiring it to “block over 8,000 accounts in India, subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment of the company’s local employees”.
Terms of service of the micro-blogging platform, of which Tesla CEO Elon Musk owns “9.6 percent stake” according to a 2022 Reuters report, say all “legal requests” are submitted via X’s legal request submissions site. Adding, “Receipt of correspondence by this means does not waive any objections, including the lack of jurisdiction or proper service.”
In its statement in May, X had specified that ‘orders’ received by the Indian government “…include demands to block access in India to accounts belonging to international news organizations and prominent X users”.
The 255-word statement went on to say that “in most cases” the Indian government “has not specified which posts from an account have violated India’s local laws” and, for “a significant number of accounts, we (X) did not receive any evidence or justification to block the accounts”.
Through the statement, the platform Musk acquired in October 2022 also expressed its ‘disagreement’ with the Indian government’s “demands”.
“Blocking entire accounts is not only unnecessary, it amounts to censorship of existing and future content, and is contrary to the fundamental right of free speech,” it submitted, following up with: “However, due to legal restrictions, we are unable to publish the executive orders at this time.”
Update: The Reuters primary and world handles were restored on 6 July 2025, less than 24 hours after they were withheld by X
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)