Independent news publication The Wire on Friday said the government has ordered internet service providers to block its website, the claim raising many an eyebrow even more because throughout the intervening night of May 8 and May 9, a number of TV channels carried fake news about the India-Pakistan conflict including that the Indian Navy had destroyed Karachi port.
“In a clear violation of the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press, the Government of India has blocked access to thewire.in across India,” The Wire said in a social media post. “Internet Service Providers say The Wire has been "blocked as per the order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the IT Act, 2000”.
“We protest this blatant censorship at a critical time for India when sane, truthful, fair and rational voices and sources of news and information are among the biggest assets that India has,” the publication said.
“We are taking all necessary steps to challenge this arbitrary and inexplicable move. Your support has kept our work going for the past 10 years and we are counting on all of us standing together at this time. We will not be deterred from providing truthful and accurate news to all our readers. Satyamev jayate,” it added.
Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, posted on X that “at least two ISPs are telling their customers that The Wire cannot be reached because the government has issued orders to block the site.”
He added that while some users in India may still be able to access the site, the restriction was gradually taking effect.
When The Telegraph Online checked at 1pm IST on Friday, the site could be opened. However, from 1:30pm onward the site was unreachable.
“The Wire remains fully accessible in India via VPN, of course, so there is life beyond the Great Wall of Modi, and readers abroad too can access us, but we will launch a mirror site very soon. Stay tuned,” Varadarajan wrote on X.
The site, launched in 2015 by Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M.K. Venu, has built a reputation for its critical coverage of the Narendra Modi government.
The government has not provided a public explanation for the order, so far.
The ministry of defence has issued an advisory to media channels and social media users, warning against live or speculative coverage of defence operations.
Varadarajan described the government’s move as “arbitrary and inexplicable,” and pledged to legally challenge the order.
“We are taking all necessary steps to challenge this... Your support has kept our work going for the past 10 years and we are counting on all of us standing together at this time,” he said.
In 2017, Union home minister Amit Shah’s son, Jay Shah, filed a criminal defamation case against The Wire’s editors over an article headlined: ‘The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah’.
