Writer, economist, & journalist. Editor, @TheIndiaForum. Earlier Editor, @epw_in. Before that with @the_hindu, @deccanherald
Hyderabad, India
Joined March 2007
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Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
Delhi Police asks X to take down IFF's account and posts. IFF will challenge the notices in court unless they are withdrawn.
The Delhi Police has asked X to remove the Internet Freedom Foundation's account, six of its posts, the accounts of SFLC and @geoblockedindia, and posts by 16 other users, on the ground that they defame the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The posts document and comment on a legal notice sent in the RSS's name to IFF, SFLC and @geoblockedindia, which demanded that the three stop criticising and documenting government blocking orders. IFF received copies of the two police notices from X on the morning of 3 November 2026.
IFF calls on the Delhi Police to withdraw both notices. If they are not withdrawn, IFF will challenge them in court.
What has happened
On 29 October 2026 at 9:54 PM, IFF, SFLC and the operator of @geoblockedindia received a two-page "legal notice" said to be issued on behalf of the RSS. It asked the three to stop opposing the government's blocking directions, stop documenting restricted content, stop posting details of geo-blocked posts, and confirm in writing within seven days that they would comply. It was signed by an unnamed "Authorised Signatory". Several RSS office-bearers have since said on X that the notice is not authentic. IFF replied to the notice, wrote to the RSS at its official address asking whether it had authorised it, and published both the notice and its reply on 30 October.
On 31 October 2026 at 8:06 PM, the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime), Delhi Police, filed an "Illegal Content Report" with X (reference LD-321926). It listed two posts: IFF's post of 30 October on the notice, and SFLC post of the same day. The stated reason was that the posts are "defamatory towards the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh under Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023". The boxes for "safety/security", "defamation" and "other" were ticked. The fields for the nature of the court order and court order details were left empty. The desired action was "Remove/withhold content".
On 1 November 2026, a second notice arrived in the RSS's name. It said the matter had been handed to the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, that complaints had been filed in several states, and that requests had been made to block IFF's X account and suspend the organisations. The Delhi Police had made its first request to X the previous evening. IFF did not know this until X told it on 3 November.
On 2 November 2026 at 8:51 AM, the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) filed a second notice with X (reference LD-322956). It lists 40 URLs. Thirty-seven are posts. Three are the entire accounts of @internetfreedom, @SFLCin and @geoblockedindia. This time the boxes for "Hate speech", "defamation", "safety/security", "enforcement of court order" and "other" were all ticked. The court order fields were again left empty. The stated reason reads: "The posts constitute defamation and illegal content under Section 356 BNS. Under Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules, 2021, read with Section 79(3)(b) IT Act, lawful notices require action within 3 hours."
The 16 other users are @ProdctiveUseful, @PanjwaniManoj, @jidge_, @RatanSharda55, @baxiabhishek, @SchrdingersDbag, @ashleshbiradar, @seemay, @NasirHussainINC, @Being_creat_ive, @AjoyDharmavaram, @othlaw, @_ananyaaa, @AimPoojaind, @incorigibleBhai and @rraoind. Their posts, as far as IFF can tell, comment on the notice or on the notice about it.
X forwarded both notice to IFF on 3 November 2026, at 8:47 AM and 10:03 AM, saying it was doing so "in the interest of transparency" and that IFF may wish to seek legal counsel and challenge the request in court. X's emails do not say that it has acted on the requests. The Delhi Police has not written to IFF, and no court has been approached, as far as the reports disclose. SFLC and @geoblockedindia have separately reported notifications from X about requests from the Uttar Pradesh Police, the Telangana Police and the Delhi Police's Cyber Crime unit, one of them against the whole of the @geoblockedindia account.
IFF's position
IFF condemns this legal action. A police force has made itself the enforcement arm of a private legal notice whose authenticity the organisation it names has not confirmed, and whose demand was that three organisations stop documenting censorship. The notices would deliver exactly what the notice asked for as they would also remove the accounts of the three groups in India that keep public records of what is blocked, and of who ordered it.
The posts in question are about a legal notice sent to us. They quote it, criticise how it was drafted, and say that we will carry on with our work. A person who receives a threat is entitled to publish it and answer it and that is not defamation of the sender.
In the three weeks before the first notice, IFF assisted 86 people whose accounts were suspended or whose posts were withheld in India. SFLC's Free Speech Tracker recorded about 268 content restrictions and 83 account restrictions in the first 29 days of October. @geoblockedindia publishes the orders behind such blocks when platforms disclose them. None of this is unlawful. Documenting censorship and challenging it in court is what the Constitution expects of citizens.
IFF will not delete the posts. If the Delhi Police does not withdraw the notices, we will challenge them in court.
Why the reports are unlawful
Defamation is not a police matter. Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 is a non-cognizable and bailable offence. Under Section 222 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, no court can take cognizance of it except on a complaint by the person aggrieved.
Under Section 174 of the BNSS, the police cannot investigate a non-cognizable offence without an order of a Magistrate. The Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) is not the person aggrieved. The notices disclose no complaint by the RSS and no order of any Magistrate. Whether a statement is defamatory is for a court to decide after hearing its author, with the defences of truth, fair comment and good faith available to that author.
In Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India, (2016) 7 SCC 221, the Supreme Court upheld criminal defamation on the strength of these safeguards. A police officer who asks a platform to remove speech as defamatory has decided the question himself, without a complainant, a court or a hearing.
The posts are protected comment. Exceptions 1 to 3 to Section 356(1) protect the truth published for the public good, opinion on the public conduct of public servants, and opinion on the conduct of any person touching a public question. The posts publish a notice that was sent to us and give our opinion of it. The RSS, if it sent the notice, chose to enter a public question. If it did not, the posts defame no one.
Further, Section 79(3)(b) and Rule 3(1)(d) do not permit this. In Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1, the Supreme Court read down Section 79(3)(b) so that an intermediary acquires "actual knowledge" only through a court order, or a notification from the appropriate government or its agency that unlawful acts relatable to Article 19(2) are being committed. The court said that it would be difficult for intermediaries to judge the legitimacy of the millions of requests they receive, and that the burden must not be placed on them. Rule 3(1)(d), as amended in November 2025 and February 2026, now requires the intimation to come from an officer not below the rank of Joint Secretary or Deputy Inspector General, to be reasoned, and to specify the legal basis and the nature of the unlawful act, subject to a monthly review by a Secretary-level officer. The three-hour window the notice invokes applies to a lawful order that meets these conditions. A web form that ticks "hate speech" and "enforcement of court order" while leaving the court order fields blank, and that gives one sentence of reasons for 40 URLs, is not such an order.
The notices by the Delhi Police are disproportionate. They seek to remove three accounts in their entirety, with years of posts, over six, four and eleven posts respectively. They sweep in 16 third parties whose only connection is that they commented on a public controversy. In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, (2020) 3 SCC 637, the Supreme Court held that any restriction on speech must be necessary, proportionate and the least restrictive measure available, and that orders restricting speech must be published and reasoned. Removing an organisation's entire account for criticising a legal notice fails each of these tests.
The effect is to silence documentation of censorship and providing legal aid to Indian internet users. The accounts named are those that record blocking orders in India. The notice asked them to stop. A takedown request that accomplishes the demand of an anonymous private notice is not law enforcement. It is the use of state power for a private end, which Article 14 forbids.
Our demands
1. To the Delhi Police: Withdraw reports LD-321926 and LD-322956 and confirm the withdrawal in writing to X and to IFF.
2. To the Delhi Police: Disclose the complaint on which the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) acted, the authority under which the reports were filed, and whether any order of a Magistrate under Section 174 BNSS exists. Disclose every request made to any platform in this matter, including those made by the Cyber Crime unit against @geoblockedindia.
3. To X: Do not act on the reports. If any content is withheld in India, tell the affected user before acting, give them the full request, and name the legal basis. Publish both reports to the Lumen database, as the reporting form itself contemplates.
4. To the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Ministry of Home Affairs: Have the Secretary-level review required by Rule 3(1)(d) examine these intimations, and tell police forces that Rule 3(1)(d) is not a remedy for defamation, which the law reserves to the person aggrieved and to the courts.
5. To the RSS: State publicly whether it authorised either notice or any complaint to the police. If it did not, say so to the Delhi Police.
If the notices are not withdrawn, IFF will challenge them in court. We will continue to document blocking orders, to publish them, and to provide legal assistance to anyone whose account or post is withheld in India. Nothing in these notices changes that.
Home Minister Amit Shah's speech in Hyderabad -- in a locality peopled mainly by the minorities -- that 3 crore "illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh" have been identified by the SIR is a dangerous upping of the ante.
In order to counter the Opposition's (misplaced) criticism that very few undocumented migrants have been identified so far by the SIR, the Home Minister -- says these 3 crore will be deported.
This is absurd. During Partition at worst 20 million or 2 crore people crossed borders in the East and West. And 3 crore is equivalent to more than 15 % of the current population of Bangladesh.
No matter the absurdity, this will soon be seeded into Whatsapp groups and campaign speeches, and mentioned in Parliament (It was the Home Minister again who stated in Parliament in 2019 that India would reclaim all areas of Kashmir and Aksai Chin now with Pakistan and China -- whose fallout was seen in Galwan the next year).
This is going to poison social relations even more.
#SIR
Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
The New Yorker, is now interested to study the Brazilian working class. They look at André Janones and "Lula’s Army" and call it a "tech-savvy" miracle that reversed the far-right surge.
But they are missing the profound civilizational shift that just took place.
Let us look at the material reality of those three weeks between the first and second rounds.
For years, the empire and the domestic oligarchs treated the internet as their private property. They used Silicon Valley algorithms, dark money, and decentralized right-wing troll farms to isolate, exhaust, and manipulate the public.
When Flávio Bolsonaro took the lead in the first round, the left didn't just buy better ads. André Janones digitized the physical solidarity of the streets. He organized millions of ordinary Brazilians into "Lula’s Army," synchronizing their messaging to manually overpower the algorithm.
The strategy was so devastatingly effective that the Global North is now begging the Global South for the blueprint. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has requested Janones’s help, and in France, activists are studying "Janonisme" to fight the far-right.
Why is the institutional media in New York and Paris suddenly looking to a Brazilian politician to learn how to survive the digital age?
Because for a decade, the empire believed the working class was too atomized and too exhausted to fight back online. They thought the digital realm was permanently locked behind algorithms controlled by right-wing billionaires.
But Brazil proved a beautiful, undeniable truth: when ordinary people—the nurses, the bus drivers, the students—synchronize their dignity, no algorithm can contain them. The left didn't just "hack" a social media platform; they broke the empire's digital enclosure.
The Global North spent billions building a digital cage for the world.
But the Brazilian working class just figured out how to pick the lock, and now the rest of the world is asking them for the key.
Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
Such a Powerful Speech by this lady. 🔥
A single mom just asked the question Modi and Gyanesh Kumar CAN'T answer 🔥😢
Anita Jaiswal. Daily wage worker in Delhi. Voter since 2012.
She held up her voter ID and spoke:
> "From 2012 to 2025 I voted in every election. My vote made MPs and ministers."
> "One day at a cyber cafe I found out my voter ID was DELETED."
> "Who gave you the right to delete it?"
> "You can't give me a job, can't give me a house. Then who gave you the right to take?"
> "Now you prove which country I'm a citizen of."
Think about it for a second.
> Her court case, her bank account, her daughter's scholarship, all built on that voter ID
> 13 years of voting, wiped off in silence
> And now they want her to stand in line and fill Form 6 like a stranger
Her answer: "I will NOT fill Form 6. Restore my 2012 voter ID."
Then she ended with Bismil:
"Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai."
The hall stood with her. So should the whole country.
Anita ji ka vote chhina, hausla nahi 🗿🔥
The Union Home Minister is to visit Hyderabad on November 2 to lead a “Save Democracy” padayatra. He may wish to visit the homes of voters in Booths 150 and 151 of Secunderabad Cantonment Assembly constituency in the city who find their names deleted from the draft SIR because they were supposed to be absent, shifted, dead or duplicate voters. They can be informed that democracy is thriving in the country. @HMOIndia @ECISVEEP @CEO_Telangana #SIR #Telangana
Over the past fortnight, members of The Telangana Voter Rights Forum visited every voter in these booths. There were 1,829 persons on the 2025 electoral roll, Of them the names of 721 have been deleted from the draft SIR. Of the remaining 1,101 on the rolls, as many as 821 have been given notices…leaving only 280 persons of the earlier 1,829 as “SIR cleared”.
The Forum held a public hearing in Secunderabad on Saturday 31 October where voters from the two booths came and spoke about their SIR experiences..
Here are details and brief summaries of testimonies of a few of them. Angry, upset and bewildered of why a basic constitutional right is now being denied to them:
1. Arun Kumar, Age 46, (EPIC No: GBZ1048487), Part no 150, Serial no 110: Arun Kumar and his wife have lived in the same address for years and they have voted a number of times in state and parliament elections; The couple submitted the SIR enumeration forms in time and received a signed acknowledgement too. Arun Kumar finds his name has been deleted as “untraceable/absent” while his wife remains on the rolls. He refuses to re-apply as a new voter on Form 6 because he says, “my vote is my right and I want to retain my past record”.
2. Riya Rawley (ZDR2960731), Age 49, Part 150, Serial no 86: Submitted her forms in time. Name deleted as “untraceable/absent”
3. Surekha Joshi, 51, (ZEU1408400), Part 150, Serial no 125: Has lived in the same home for 30 years. She submitted her forms in time, but finds herself removed as “untraceable/absent”, while others in the family at the same address are on the draft SIR roll
4. Venkatesh, Age 75, an autorickshaw driver, partially paralysed and can only speak with some difficulty. Registered voter. Submitted forms of both his wife and himself. He could not give his photograph in time. Name deleted; wants his vote back and original voter ID number to be retained.
6. Francis Thomas: Registered voter, submitted the enumeration form, where all detailed were also mapped to 2002 SIR as required. But he has now received notice for “logical discrepancy”
7 Safiya: Seven adults in the family with voter IDs, all of them submitted their enumeration forms in time. Six have been sent notices for “logical discrepancy”, the seventh has been deleted from the draft roll.
8. K Ganesh, Age 36, (GBZ1056738), Part No 150, Serial no 55: Has lived at the same address all his life; he submitted his forms in time, received a signed acknowledgement on the second copy, but has been marked as “Permanently Shifted” in the draft SIR rolls.
9. P. Kumar (GBZ76720700) Age 46, Part no 151, Serial no 159: He has been a registered voter since he turned 18. Form was given to his wife but not to him. Now deleted from the rolls as “Permanently Shifted”
10. Yadagiri and Chandrakala: Couple do “istri” (ironing) work in the area. Yadagiri was born in 1947 in Hyderabad. Cannot read or write but he has been a registered voter who has regularly voted. He has lived in the same area for decades but was not given the SIR enumeration forms and has now been told that his name and that of his wife have been deleted from the draft SIR as “Untraceable”.
He says his vote is his “haq” and he refuses to re-register afresh with Form 6 by declaring he is a new voter. “Dead people get to be voters, why should my record of having voted be deleted?”
11. Karunamma, attended the hearing on behalf of her son K. Suresh, a registered voter, who could not be present. All the adults in the family received the SIR forms and submitted them but Suresh finds his name has been deleted as “Untraceable”. Karunamma says her son will not re-apply for a fresh registration with Form 6.
“Why should he apply again by telling a lie that he has not voted before?”
In Hyderabad, 20 lakh names are missing in the draft rolls, and another 12 lakhs have been served notices for discrepancies/missing documents. All of them need reassurance that democracy is thriving in the country.
ALT "Deleted" voter giving her testimony in Secunderabad
Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
Piers Morgan: What was it you were smirking about?
Moser: I was actually laughing... A recently founded settler colony, Israel, which was founded in living memory... ranting at an Iranian, saying that his country is fake, Iran, one of the most ancient countries in the world.
Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
We are still alive in Gaza… 🥹🇵🇸
Despite everything, we are still trying to hold on.
If you see this photo, please don’t scroll past in silence.
Write anything — even a single dot means so much to us and reminds us that we are not alone. 🥹💔🙏
Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
THE BIG IDBI STORY🚨
LIC Director Sat on Fairfax Co's Board While LIC Was Selling IDBI to Fairfax
For 7mnths, G.Mahalingam sat on boards of both LIC, a seller of IDBI Bank, & Fairfax-controlled Thomas Cook, as Fairfax bid for the bank.
@BWBusinessworld
businessworld.in/article/lic…
Harsh Mander: The unlikely redemption of the 13-year-old jailed for the murder of Graham Staines scroll.in/article/1096401/ha… via @scroll_in
Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
"Today, India is once again in the vanguard — this time leading, perhaps, in the opposite direction....Beset as Modi is by crises within and without, his iron grip on power is clanging against the steel of India’s messy democracy."
Truly excellent from @lpolgreen
Lula wins...
"With nearly 99% of votes counted the 80-year-old leftist received 51.75% of the vote to his 45-year-old rival’s 48.25%."
What a relief. Next Netanyahu (though it may not make much of a difference to the genocidal state), and then...
theguardian.com/world/2026/o…
Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
Asim Ali is by some distance the most acute analyst of desi politics.
I write on Sharjeel Imam as a committed democrat who deserves a place in a radical democratic project of the future, one focused on the liberty and equality of all.
telegraphindia.com/amp/opini…
Rammanohar Reddy retweeted
@KanwalSibal
I have been trolled by two rupee trolls for years. Should I feel privileged to be trolled by a former Foreign Secretary?
The @epw_in is an institution. But we do not know much of where it came from. This is an affectionate story by Alaknanda Patel of 'The Economic Weekly' , the forerunner of EPW, seen from close quarters. theindiaforum.in/history/sac… @TheIndiaForum
