New Delhi:
In an unprecedented bid to block material critical of controversial business school Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), the Indian government has ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to prevent access to more than 70 URLs following a court order.

The directive was issued on the basis of an order from a court in Gwalior, said Gulshan Rai, director general of CERT-In (Computer Emergency Response Team-India). The order signed by Subodh Saxena of the department of telecommunications (DoT) was issued on Thursday and was reported earlier on Friday by the Medianama website.

Interestingly, the URLs listed include a University Grants Commission (UGC) notification that IIPM is not a university and"does not have the right of conferring or granting degrees as specified by UGC."

The move comes amid criticism of the government for recent steps that have been regarded as attempts to curb freedom of speech.
DoT couldn"™t be immediately reached for comment. UGC and IIPM representatives also couldn"™t be immediately reached for comment.

IIPM has been the subject of several critical articles in various publications, including Outlook, Careers 360 and Caravan. A controversy had blown up in 2005 over attempts to gag a blogger critical of IIPM. That site too is among those ordered to be blocked.

Other URLs include stories on sites of publications such as The Indian Express, The Economic Times and blog posts on The Wall Street Journal site among others.

IIPM used to be a significant advertiser in large mainstream newspapers such as The Times of India and Hindustan Times until recently.



Note from Free Speech Tracker:

The news was first broken by website medianama:
India"™s Department of Telecommunications yesterday issued instructions to Internet Service Licensees to block access to 78 URLs from India, and what is evident from the list of URLs is that 73 of these are related to the educational institution IIPM. The order is signed by Subodh Saxena of the DoT.

Most surprisingly, the block covers the University Grants Commission, wherein a notice from the UGC pointing towards the unrecognized status of IIPM has been ordered to be blocked.

What is worrying is that the blocks include URLs of news portals like Outlook Magazine, Careers360, The Times of India, FirstPost, Rediff, The Indian Express, The Economic Times, MensXP, The Wall Street Journal, The Caravan Magazine, whose reports related to IIPM have been blocked.

Apart from this, spoof news site Faking News has 8 URLs in
the list (some repeated), while a URL from The Unreal Times has also been asked to be blocked. Also blocked are blog posts from 2005 and 2006 critical of IIPM, including those from Gaurav Sabnis and Rashmi Bansal.

Apart from this, URL on consumer complaints portals Akosha and
consumercourtforum.in related to IIPM has also been ordered to be
blocked, as well as a compilation of links on Bitly by Mahesh Murthy.

The Wall Street Journal and Caravan Magazine have their Arindam
Chaudhuri specific tags in the list for blocking as well.

Note that these blocks may not have been implemented in all earnest yet, but the orders to block them have been issued. Doesn"™t look like these blocks can be justified on the grounds of national security.

The order to block these sites can be accessed at: