New Delhi: The Indian government, which recently blocked 32 websites in an effort to curb ISIS propaganda in the country, has now unblocked four of the websites.
In a statement, the ministry of communications and information technology said that it has initiated action to unblock vimeo.com, dailymotion.com, gist.github.com and weebly.com. The statement also said that “similar approach (of unblocking websites) could be considered for other involved websites on getting assurance that law of the land would be complied with.”
However, the other 28 websites remain blocked in the country.
The Anti Terrorism Squad had called for the ban on these websites as they were being used to spread Jihadi propaganda. The ministry in its statement said, “These websites work on page hosting concept. Many of these websites do not require any authentication for pasting any material on them. Other (websites allow users to) upload articles, videos or photos or to download the contents which helps to hide the identities. These websites were being used frequently for pasting, communicating such content by just changing page name or even blocking the earlier one.”
The 32 websites were inaccessible from India on BSNL and Vodafone networks. Vimeo, Dailymotion, gist.github and Weebly are accessible over the networks at present while the others remain blocked.
The ban on the websites created a furore on social media, with Twitter users bandying together to protest against this move by the government using the hashtag #GOIblocks.
Hacktivist group Anonymous India threatened to retaliate against the government over the ban on the websites.
