Social Networking site Twitter has restored various accounts, including the accounts of a news website, actor and various political leaders after, temporarily withholding them. These accounts had in the past week posted several messages supporting the farmers’ protests in India.

As per the Twitter Rules and policies:

Many countries, including the United States have laws that may apply to tweets and/or Twitter account content. In our continuing effort to make our services available to people everywhere, if we receive a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time. Such withholdings will be limited to the specific jurisdiction that has issued the valid legal demand or where the content has been found to violate local laws.

When the accounts were withheld, no notice was issued to these accounts stating the reason. In a statement issued after restoring the accounts, Twitter said that the accounts were withheld due to a valid legal demand by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) as these agencies expressed a threat to public order on account of incitement by these accounts. However, Twitter restored these accounts on finding that the messages were not posted to incite but were posted as an expression of right to free speech. Twitter stated that, “Public conversation and transparency is fundamental to the work we do at Twitter.”