The Wire news website stated on Saturday that its website was unblocked shortly after it contacted the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting regarding the censorship. According to the news portal, the government had asked it to remove an article based on a CNN report as a condition for lifting the block.
The Union government on Friday, May 9, blocked access to The Wire’s website across the country, citing technical limitations following a complaint regarding a report it published about the Rafale jet.
Although the investigative story was subsequently taken down, Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of The Wire, condemned the move as an “unconstitutional attack on the freedom of the press,” adding that the platform would explore legal remedies.
After the site went offline, Varadarajan reached out to both the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to inquire about the reasons behind the sudden block.
Despite the website now being accessible again, The Wire stated on Saturday, May 10, that users from different parts of the country and across various networks were still facing issues accessing the site.
According to The Wire’s statement, the MIB responded on May 9, claiming that technical limitations compelled them to block the entire website.
The ministry explained that due to the nature of HTTPS protocols, they were incapable of blocking individual web pages and could only restrict entire domains. MIB further requested The Wire to take “appropriate action regarding that content and inform of the action taken, which would enable the Ministry to unblock the website.”
In response, The Wire notified the authorities that it had removed the contentious report at 10:40 p.m. on May 9, emphasizing that its “priority” was to restore access to its website and that it had “no option but to comply with this unfair demand while reserving our rights under the Constitution of India to seek appropriate remedies.”
The platform also argued that the government’s action contravened provisions of the Information Technology (IT) Act, as the MIB failed to issue a prior notice or provide The Wire an opportunity to present its stance.
Siddharth Varadarajan pointed out that blocking could have been justified only if The Wire had refused to comply with the request from the Inter-Departmental Committee to take down the story.
He stressed that the report had been published on May 8 and that the information it contained had already been available online for over 12 hours, including in a report by CNN that remains accessible in India. “I fail to see why the government wants our story deleted and treated it as such a matter of emergency more than 24 hours after publication that no notice was even served to us and our entire website blocked,” he stated.
Varadarajan also noted that under emergency powers, the correct procedure begins with issuing a formal directive to the concerned party, which the MIB failed to do. “The MIB omitted to even respond to our query for seven hours after we wrote to it,” he said.
In its letter, the MIB said The Wire would be granted an opportunity to submit its “comments/clarifications” before the Inter-Departmental Committee established under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
