• By Abhirupa Kundu
  • Wed, 17 Apr 2024 11:18 AM (IST)
  • Source:JND
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With the Lok Sabha Election 2024 around the corner, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had asked social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to take down some posts containing political speeches from elected political leaders, parties and candidates in the fray. The Elon Musk-owned X said that it had withheld some content after the EC's order, however, on Tuesday it stated that X disagreed with the polls body's request and asked it to publish all of its "takedown orders going forward".

"The Election Commission of India has issued takedown orders requiring X to act on posts containing political speech shared from elected politicians, political parties and candidates for office. In compliance with the orders, we have withheld these posts for the remainder of the election period; however, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts and political speech in general," X's Global Government Affairs team tweeted.

"We have notified the affected users and in the interest of transparency, we are publishing the takedown orders here. We call on the Election Commission to publish all of its takedown orders going forward," the X post which had attachments of a series of requests by the Election Commission requesting the social media platform to remove the posts read.

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The Election Commission had ordered social media platform X to take down select posts of YSR Congress, AAP, N Chandrababu Naidu and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary for violation of model code of conduct, the microblogging site said on Tuesday.

The orders were issued on April 2 and April 3 and a follow-up email was sent by the poll panel on April 10 in which it cited a violation of the "voluntary code of ethics" if X fails to remove the four posts reported to it.

Elections for the 543 Lok Sabha seats will be held between April 19 and June 1 in seven phases. The counting of votes for the Lok Sabha Polls will be held on June 4.