Government on Wednesday said that it directed social networking sites to block 8, 21, 352 and 1,208 URLs during 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively to comply with the court orders.

In response to question in the Parliament, telecom minister Kapil Sibal said that social networking sites were requested to block these web pages in order to comply with court orders.

He said that 362, URLs were also blocked in 2012, of which 312 URLs were blocked in a single instance at the time of exodus of North East people from different parts of the country, the Minister said.
 
Sibal said that a total of 62 URLs have been blocked so far during the current year.
 
"The web pages were hosting objectionable information and had the potential to disturb the public order in the country and blocked for access to public in the country on the request of law enforcement agencies," he said.
 
He said that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) gets requests for blocking of objectionable content from individuals and organisations, which it forwards to the social networking sites for appropriate action, Sibal said.