Remove content with references to 'Indian variant' of Coronavirus, Indian government tells social media platforms

Use of the term is without any scientific basis, it argues

India's information technology ministry has reportedly sent notices to social media firms instructing them to remove all posts with references to an 'Indian variant' of the coronavirus.

Reuters says it has seen a letter issued by the government last week, telling platforms that media reports using the term 'Indian Variant' were without any scientific basis.

The ministry said the World Health Organisation has listed the variant as B.1.617 and never used the term 'Indian variant' for it.

"This is completely FALSE. There is no such variant of Covid-19 scientifically cited as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO)," says the letter from the ministry, which was made public but was obtained by several news outlets.

"WHO has not associated the term 'Indian variant' with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in any of its reports," it adds.

A government source told Reuters that the government believes such references of 'Indian variant' spread misinformation and could harm the image of the country.

An executive from a social media company said that it would be difficult to remove all posts using a specific world as there must be hundreds of thousands of such posts.

Such a move would also lead to "keyword based censorship going forward," the executive added.

In the past one year, doctors and health experts have commonly used geographical terms to refer to other coronavirus variants, such as Brazil, UK and South Africa variants.

Coronavirus variant B.1.617, which is a more transmissible variant, was first identified in India last year. B.1.617 has spread to more than 17 countries, and the WHO has now classified it as a variant of global concern.

India is currently struggling to deal with the second wave of Covid-19 infections, which has led to a large number of deaths in the past two months. The country is now second only to the United States in terms of overall infections. The number of coronavirus-related deaths is now close to 300,000, behind only the US and Brazil. In recent months, the health system of the country has reeled under pressure, with hospital facing shortage of beds and medical oxygen for serious patients.

Last month, the India's government drew criticism when it asked Twitter and other platforms to take down Covid-19 posts critical of government's handling of the current Covid-19 crisis.

The government said that those posts used unrelated, out of context images and misinformation, as well as communally sensitive material, to create panic about the Covid-19 situation in the country.

In a statement, Twitter told Reuters that it reviews a valid legal request under both local law and Twitter rules, and if content "is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of Twitter's rules," the platform withholds access to the content "in India only".

Back in February, Twitter angered the Indian government by refusing its request to remove more than 1,100 accounts and posts, which the government said were spreading misinformation about farmer protests.

The government later introduced guidelines, saying they were meant to control the spread of misinformation on social media platforms.

Under new rules, the government can ask a social media company to takedown "unlawful" material from its platform. Companies that fail to comply with the order within deadline can face legal action.