Indian government blocked 3,635 URLs in 2019, says IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

The Indian government blocked more than 3,600 URLs (uniform resource locators) were blocked in 2019, up from 2,799 in the last year, under a specific provision of the Information Technology Act, 2000, Parliament was informed on Thursday.

In a written reply to a query in the Rajya Sabha, Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Section 69A of the IT Act offers blocking of unlawful and malicious online content in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence and security of the united states, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence linked to these.

"Under this provision, 1,385, 2,799 and 3,635 URLs were blocked through the years 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively," he was quoted as saying by PTI but gave no information on what kind of sites these were.

Pornographic sites have already been blocked in India, but the minister didn't give any specifics if these were included on the set of blocked sites.

No details were available about any action taken to curb the spread of false information and fake news either, despite several fake news sites operating in the united states, and mainstream media that are uncritical of the government routinely putting out unverified information, later fact-checked and found to be false.

In response to another query, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Sanjay Dhotre said the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs, started collecting data for cybercrimes against children (involving computer as medium/target) since 2017.

"As per the info maintained by NCRB, a complete of 7 and 40 cases of cyber bullying against children were registered through the year 2017 and 2018, respectively," Dhotre added.