The Indian government asked Twitter to take down dozens of tweets that were critical of India's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, including some by local lawmakers.
Twitter has withheld some of the tweets after the legal request by the Indian government, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.
The government made an emergency order to censor the tweets, Twitter disclosed on Lumen database, a Harvard University project.
In the government's legal request, dated 23 April and disclosed on Lumen, 21 tweets were mentioned. Among them were tweets from a lawmaker named Revanth Reddy, a minister in the state of West Bengal named Moloy Ghatak, and a filmmaker named Avinash Das.
"India will never forgive PM @narendramodi for underplaying the corona situation in the country and letting so many people die due to mismanagement.
At a time when India is going through a health crisis,PM chose to export millions of vaccine to other nations #ModiHataoDeshBachao," Moloy Ghatak wrote.
"Twitter has complied with govt requests to censor 52 tweets largely critical of India’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Affected accounts include MP Revanth Reddy, WB minister Moloy Ghatak, actor Vineet Kumar Singh, among others," Nikhil Pahwa said.
India set a new global record of the most number of Covid-19 infections in a day, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged all citizens to be vaccinated and exercise caution, saying the "storm" of infections had shaken the country.
Modi's government has faced criticism that it let its guard down, allowed big religious and political gatherings to take place when India's cases plummeted to below 10,000 a day and did not plan on building up the healthcare systems.
Hospitals and doctors have put out urgent notices that they were unable to cope with the rush of patients.
People were arranging stretchers and oxygen cylinders outside hospitals as they desperately pleaded for authorities to take patients in, Reuters photographers said.
"Every day, it's the same situation, we are left with two hours of oxygen, we only get assurances from the authorities," one doctor said on television. ■