NEW DELHI: The ministry of telecommunications has asked Internet Service Providers to, including those of right-wing entities and leaders such as Sangh Parivar Panchjanya magazine and Dr Pravin Togadia blogposts and hundreds of web-pages featuring user-generated content on websites such as Facebook and Youtube.Through fourdirectives to Internet Service Providers between 18 August and 21 August, the department of telecom has blocked numerous web pages on concerns that communal tensions were being fanned in the wake of the unrest following violence in the border districts of Assam. After protests in Mumbai on August 18 turned violent, the government had said that hate content was being spread through the Internet by groups in Pakistan.ET has exclusively accessed government directives blocking Twitter handles and web pages.The directive to block 16 Twitter handles were part of the notification sent out by the communications ministry on August 20. Only one of the twitter handles—@PM0India (the digit zero instead of alphabet O)—bears resemblance to the prime minister’s official account '@PMOIndia'.The Twitter accounts of two journalists—columnist Kanchan Gupta and television journalist Shiv Aroor—are among those that have been blocked.The directives only say that it has been decided to block these accounts. It does not quote any sections of the IT Act or any other law under which the decision to block the websites has been taken.The other twitter handles that have been blocked include Dosabandit (@dosabandit), Eagle Eye (@eagleeye47), Twitanic (@anilkohli54), Sangh Parivar (@sanghpariwar), Amit Paranjape (@aparanjape), Sumeet (@sumeetcj), Pravin Togadia (DrPravinTogadia), Panchajanya (@i_panchajanya), Barbarian Indian (@barbarindian), Scamsutra (@scamsutra), Ekakizunj (@ekakizunj) and redditindia (@redditindia).Many of these handles were still accessible across internet connections with the exception of Airtel.This comes even as Twitter, which has about 16 million accounts from India, agreed to block six fake accounts, which the government said were ‘misrepresenting’ Prime Minister Manmohan Singh."Twitter has agreed to block the six fake PM accounts. They responded to our complaint saying we need to follow an internal channel to lodge a formal complaint in the matter,” a news report quoted PM's communications adviser Pankaj Pachauri as saying.But when ET contacted Pachauri, he said that the Indian government did not have a "problem with criticism on social media"."Infact we welcome it as genuine feedback. In some instances, actions have been initiated on complaints made to PM's Twitter account. We also have no quarrel with people parodying PM as long as it is in the limits of good humour. We complained to Twitter about handles which were mis-representing the Prime Minister, impersonating his office and loading material with his picture which was provocative and could have led to confusion about communally sensitive issues among the Twitter users. When they did not respond, we took advice from the legal department in June and complained to the cyber security cell of the government for appropriate action. Now Twitter has emailed to us that they will review our requests and they will be in touch with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology about this matter. We welcome their cooperation and will follow up with them," Pachauri said.BJP attacked the Government's move to block Twitter accounts of right wing ideologues. "Freedom is sacred but those who misuse it to spread hate, divisions and violence have no right to possess it, they must be blocked and punished. But this should not become an excuse to hit at those who are ideologically different yet patriotic, democratic and rightfully critical of the state," said Tarun Vijay, National Spokesperson for the BJP, and Rajya Sabha MP ."Initially it was told that the rumor mongers were being managed from Pakistan, however out of 16 twitter blocked, all are indians and almost all are critics of Congress , 2 of them are senior journalists. If this is how the govt wants to proceed, this is Stalinist approach," Vijay said.