When Elon Musk met Narendra Modi in Washington, DC in February, SpaceX and Tesla chiefs presented the Indian Prime Minister with a gift and introduced him to his family. Modi described the meeting as “very good.”
Modi was in the United States to meet President Donald Trump. According to the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during Modi’s encounter with Musk, the two spoke about cooperation, space exploration, innovation and sustainable development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
But almost a month later, Musk’s social media platform X filed a lawsuit against the Indian government, alleging that New Delhi was illegally censoring its content online.
The lawsuit comes as it is on the edge of Musk, close to launching both Starlink and Tesla in India.
So why is X suing India just as Musk is trying to attract Modi?
Why is X suing the Indian government?
In a lawsuit filed in the Karnataka High Court in South India on March 5, X alleges that the Indian government is blocking content online, forcing government officials and ministries to remove illegal online content, and circumvent the legal process of content regulation as set out in the country’s Information Technology Act.
Section 69A of the National IT Act, passed in October 2000, grants the Ministry of IT in India the right to remove online content deemed harmful to the national security and the “public chapel”, but must follow a judicial process in which the Ministry omits permission to remove online content from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY). Meity examines the content before deciding whether to censor or not.
Currently, the Indian government is introducing a new mechanism for removing content. This introduces section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act.
Section 79(3)(b) allows online content to be removed following a brief notice from government officials. Notifications to delete content can be sent via the government’s “sahyog” portal (which means cooperation in English) portal.
The Indian government has requested that social media platforms like X sign up for the Sahyog portal, but social media platforms claim that doing so will expose them to “arbitrary-conscious censorship.”
“The new legal censorship power they created [through the Sahyog portal] There are no safeguards such as the requirement for designated officers to send censorship requests to the central government. As the national Railways Ministry did earlier this year, government departments can do so by designating officers who can send takedown requests.
“Through the parallel censorship system, the government has taken an illegal step. In this example, the claims made by X have merits,” Gupta added.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and former IT Minister, told Indian News, Asian News:
X’s lawsuit against the government will be made public by Indian media reports on March 20th, with the next hearing being held at Karnataka High Court on March 27th.
Al Jazeera contacted India’s IT Ministry and the ruling BJP party for comments.
Is there any controversy over the X chatbot driving this case?
It doesn’t seem to be the case. Meity officials told local media that they were talking to X about content generated by Grok 3, the social media platform’s built-in chatbot, but the X lawsuit came earlier.
In recent weeks, Grok has been upset in India by generating content and answers to questions from users considered “abusive and controversial” by the ruling BJP government.
When one X user “gloke” and “questioned”, the chatbot responded: “If the answer to Prime Minister Modi’s interview was scripted,
Gupta said: “In India there was a high level of self-censorship and there was an increase in what is called digital authoritarianism, and many people are not free to say what they want to say.
“But at the very root of this, people need to understand that Grok is an AI that is mostly trained with public resources, and that what it says reflects misinformation and can suffer from bias,” he added.
“There is no correlation between filing a lawsuit and submitting a response from GROK that creates a viral trend, and the only one is the same government ministries. [MeitY] It’s involved,” he added.
What does this mean for X users in India?
Gupta said it is too early to tell us what the impact of the outcome of the case would be for X users in the country.
“For Indian users, there has always been friction between the government and large social media platforms. The reason behind this is that, as governments often do not follow the constitutional restrictions imposed on them, require censorship for political reasons, the repulsion by the platform supports the cause of free expression that is very well needed in a closed society where there is a very high level of Sensorship,” he said.
“However, in this case, X has the historical issue of not being less transparent about how content moderation practices are determined and determined, and globally, X has stopped reporting government requests for takedowns submitted prior to mask takeover.
Does X-Lawl harm the outlook for masks in India?
That’s not likely, experts say. Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asian Studies Institute at Wilson Centre, a Washington, DC-based think tank, told Al Jazeera that the masks operate “many leverage” in India.
Musk also appointed by Trump to lead the US government’s new government efficiency (DOGE), announcing shaking cuts to federal jobs, claiming he found billions of dollars in waste and fraud in government spending.
“His proximity to Trump makes use of this even more, so he has the greatest leeway to wish for New Delhi without the risk of alienating him. He can also act on the principle of “free speech absolutism” on social media,” he said. He has already reached an agreement with an Indian telecom company to provide Starlink services and is discussing it with others. Plans are also underway to introduce Tesla manufacturing bases in the country.
Similarly, he said the lawsuit will have little impact on the overall US-India relations. “When you consider all the tracks of cooperation that work together in a relationship, and all the goodwill it enjoys, this X-spat is blip at best and annoying at worst. Needless to say, India’s large market is just too attractive,” he added.
“So no matter how the legal process goes, X will want to stick it out in India. The commitment to stay will also help to dodge possible bilateral tensions.”
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