No Govt. to censor Social Media: Kapil Sibbal

Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, who had raised his eyebrow against the social networking sites for allegedly portraying controversial pictures of Indian politicians, and hurting the religious sentiments of the people, today said that no government would ever censor social media.

"I want to say once and for all, without any obfuscation, no government in India will ever censor social media," Sibal said it at inaugurating the Nasscom India Leadership Forum here today.

However, he also added that the social networking sites must also follow the local laws.

"We have no intention to censor anybody, but we must make sure they will obey the law of this country."

Earlier he had warned to social media sites to ban the site 'like China' if they did not take steps to protect religious sensibilities.

A local Delhi court had ordered 21 social networking and social media sites to immediately remove the objectionable religious and social materials from the internet that hurt others' sentiments.

Following the direction of the court Facebook and Google Inc. has informed the court that it was in the move to delete the so-called 'objectionable content' from internet.

Google Inc. on February 05 in submitting its report to court had said that it had withdrawn the objectionable content from Indian domain while it is available in other countries’ domains.

Slamming to Google, and other social networking sites, the court has given 15 days of time limit from February 05 to remove the obnoxious content from internet.