An animation spoof video published by The Wire on Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been taken down by Meta-owned Instagram and Elon Musk-owned X, the news portal has claimed.

The development comes at a time a Reuters report said the government has ruled that social media companies would have to take down unlawful content within three hours of being notified about it, tightening an earlier 36-hour timeline.

The changes amend India's 2021 IT rules, which have already been a flashpoint between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government and global technology companies.

The Wire’s animation draws inspiration from actual events inside the Parliament from last week which have continued this week too during the ongoing Budget session. It has a children’s song from the 1980s as the background score.

About a week ago, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla had informed that he had warned Modi not to attend Parliament suspecting a threat from Congress MPs, specially women.

On the same day, leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi was stopped from reading excerpts from an unpublished book by former Indian Army chief M.M. Naravane. The treasury bench led by Union home minister Amit Shah and defence minister Rajnath Singh had vociferously opposed Rahul’s reading from the yet to be published book.

The Parliament has since witnessed several heated moments over the last few days.

The Wire’s 53-second animated video narrates through the song Modi’s not addressing the Lok Sabha on that day.

The Wire’s said its Instagram account was blocked for two hours on Monday. The account was restored around 8.30pm Monday but the satirical cartoon remained inaccessible, the news portal claimed.

“I call upon all readers to widely share this cartoon. “I want this government to be criticized. Criticism makes democracy stronger,” Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of The Wire, wrote on his X handle quoting Narendra Modi.

Modi had said these words.about criticism at a town hall event in London on April 18, 2018,

“But this cartoon in The Wire by ’56 Productions’ has obviously unnerved the Dear Leader because he got Ashwini Vaishnav to order its blocking on Instagram, where it had gone viral,” wrote Varadarajan.

He provided a link to the animation but the link had this message: “This Post from @thewire_in has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand.”

Varadarajan wrote: “Under the IT law, the government has to inform a publisher in advance, except in the case of an emergency. The fact that The Wire was never informed means laughter and satire have become an Emergency matter for Modi.”

Last year, The Telegraph Online had reported how at least two prominent Indian cartoonists were told that their drawings violate India’s information-technology laws.