Through a Right to Information (RTI) request which was transferred to the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), we have been able to access a list of cases under which the DoT blocked websites pursuant to an order of a Court. This updates previous forms of data but given actual URLs were not provided it is deficient. In total, 94 blocking orders were issued by the DoT during 2020 & 2021 to block or disable access to 3725 websites/URLs. Given that making such requests and getting information is a time consuming process to further transparency we wrote to Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) to, at the least, consider proactive publication of judicial orders and maintaining a public list of websites/URLs blocked under it.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://internetfreedom.in/website-blocking-orders-2021/