Asim KT

Human Being | Product Engineer | Opinions are my own

[Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) @internetfreedom]

Statement : The blocking of BitChat's code on GitHub is unconstitutional and authoritarian.

New Delhi, 24 July 2026

The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) condemns the order issued by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), Ministry of Home Affairs, directing GitHub to remove the code repositories of BitChat.

The order, Notice No. 11072601011432, was issued at 11:16 pm on 23 July 2026 under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 read with Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules, 2021. The order directs GitHub to disable access to three repositories, including the Android application and its release files, within three hours. It threatens the platform with loss of safe harbour and criminal prosecution. No copy was published by the Government of India. The public learnt of it from a post by @jack, whose team develops BitChat. Censorship in India now comes to light through disclosure by the censored.

Since 17 July 2026, the Ministry of Home Affairs has suspended mobile internet around Jantar Mantar as per public reports about five times, most recently within a 1.5 kilometre radius from 4 pm until midnight on 23 July. That radius takes in Janpath and parts of Connaught Place. Reports describe signal jammers at the protest site and people walking two kilometres before their phones work. Inside that zone a student separated from her group during a detention drive cannot send a message to say where she is. Thousands of students and young people have camped at Jantar Mantar since June, seeking accountability for examination irregularities. Permission for their march to Parliament was refused. Metro stations were shut and also internet connectivity has been blocked.

BitChat is an open source application built for exactly this situation. It passes messages from phone to phone over Bluetooth, without mobile networks or a central server. It is striking that the order does not identify a single unlawful message. It objects to what BitChat is. In its own words, the application is dangerous because it enables communication "even during network restrictions" and can "circumvent lawful restrictions" during "internet shutdowns". Hence, the government's objection is that citizens can speak to one another while it has switched the internet off.

The order is illegal on at least four grounds.

1. Section 79(3)(b) is not a blocking power. In Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) 5 SCC 1, the Supreme Court read down the provision. Intermediaries may be required to act only on a court order, or a government notification confined to the grounds under Article 19(2) of the Constitution. Blocking is governed exclusively by Section 69A and the Blocking Rules, 2009, which require a hearing and reasons recorded in writing, subject to review. Directions issued under Section 79(3)(b), Rule 3(1)(d) and the Sahyog Portal evade these safeguards, and constitutional challenges to this parallel regime are pending before High Courts.

2. The reasons in the order are circular. The order asserts that the repositories contain "information which is prohibited under any law" without naming any such information, and rests on what the application is "capable of" enabling. Anticipated misuse of a communications tool is not a lawful basis to prohibit the tool. By this logic a telephone exchange could be sealed.

3. The order cites Section 43 of the IT Act, a civil compensation provision, alongside conspiracy and abetment offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, against a platform that hosts code.

4. A three hour deadline issued close to midnight forecloses legal assessment and recourse, and fails the proportionality standard in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) 3 SCC 637.

The order also fails on its own terms as deleting a repository does not delete the application from any phone that carries it, and the mesh keeps functioning without servers. What the takedown actually prevents is scrutiny of the underlying code.

IFF demands that the Government of India:

1. Withdraw Notice No. 11072601011432 dated 23 July 2026 issued to GitHub.
2. Publish every takedown direction issued under Section 79(3)(b), Rule 3(1)(d) and the Sahyog Portal, with the reasons recorded for each.
3. Restore full connectivity around Jantar Mantar, publish all suspension orders, and disclose the legal authority for the deployment of jammers.

We stand with the developers and the young protesters whose speech this order seeks to silence.

[Mohit Chauhan @mohitlaws]

Environmental activist and former IIT professor G. D. Agrawal died after a 111-day hunger strike in 2018, demanding stronger legal protection for the Ganga River.

Neither the media covered his protest nor did the government listen to him.

[Asim KT @KTAsim]

Going to Jantar Mantar?

[Asim KT @KTAsim]

To get reliable work out of an LLM at scale, you can't just chat with it. You have to wrap it in a strict, deterministic program.
Code is the only precise way to control non-deterministic systems. We aren't going to stop programming; we're just building larger things.

[Sid @sidbid]

Reach for a workflow when a task is too big for a normal session, like a codebase wide bug hunt, or at the extreme -- @jarredsumner using it to rewrite Bun from Zig to Rust.

It works because workflows are programmatic. Claude writes an orchestration script to spin up subagents instead of making tool calls one at a time, so it massively fans out and the control flow is code, so it won't get lazy or forget halfway through thousands of files. The harness is encoded.

[Asim KT @KTAsim]

Last time I checked; we were a democracy.

[Abhijeet Dipke @abhijeet_dipke]

The government has taken down our iconic website - https://t.co/ELmb4ZlEed.

10 Lakh cockroaches had signed up on our website has members.

6 Lakh cockroaches had signed a petition to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan.

Why is the government so scared of cockroaches? But this dictatorial behaviour is opening the eyes of India's youth. Our only crime is we were demanding a better future for ourselves.

But you can't get rid of us that easily. We’re working on a new home right now. Cockroaches never die. 🪳

[Asim KT @KTAsim]

@saviomartin7 @kushwah_aaryan Congrats Savio

[Aditya Garg @AdityaGargINC]

I am a Proud Parasite. I file RTI. I question authorities. I do not bend before power. I am not scared. I am the future of India. Accept it Uncle. 🙏🏻 #CJI #SuryaKant

[Arvind Kejriwal @ArvindKejriwal]

जागो Gen-Z जागो। उठो और लड़ो।

इस वीडियो को ज़्यादा से ज़्यादा लोगों से शेयर करें और इस पर चर्चा करें।

[Asim KT @KTAsim]

@JethmalaniM "A judge attends a professional legal event organised by a body you dislike, and suddenly she must recuse. A judge’s children are empanelled as government panel counsel, and suddenly she must recuse."

Yes.

[Qwen @Alibaba_Qwen]

🚀 Introducing Qwen3.6-Max-Preview, an early preview of our next flagship model

Highlights：
⚡️ Improved agentic coding capability over Qwen3.6-Plus
📖 Stronger world knowledge and instruction following
🌍 Improved real-world agent and knowledge reliability performance

Smarter, sharper, still evolving.
More Qwen3.6 models to come. Stay tuned!

🔗👇
Blog: https://t.co/6hDQJhmkjM
Qwen Studio: https://t.co/Fe2X1IrW6r
API: https://t.co/xWPs39LBIm

[Mohammed Zubair @zoo_bear]

West Bengal SIR Pattern:

MANIKCHAK (Malda District) : Hindu voters: 50.2% Muslim voters: 49.4%.
Voters placed Under Adjudication: → 97.4% are Muslim → 2.3% are Hindu.
Total adjudication rate: 25.7%

MOTHABARI (Malda District): Hindu Voters : 30%, Muslim voters: 69.5%.
Voters placed Under Adjudication: → Muslim: 97.4%, 2.3% Hindus.
54.2% of all Muslim voters flagged.
Total adjudication rate: 38.7%.

SAMSERGANJ (Murshidabad district) : Muslim voters: 82%, Hindu Voters : 18%
Voters placed Under Adjudication: → Muslims: 98.8%, Hindus: 0.9%.
More than half, that is 55.1%. of every Muslim voter in this constituency has been placed Under Adjudication.
Total adjudication rate: 45.7%

Now here's where it gets interesting.
BAHARAMPUR constituency (Murshidabad district)
Muslim voters: 26.9%. Hindu Voters : 72.1%.
Share of adjudicated voters who are Muslim: 61.6%, Hindus : 37.3%
Total adjudication rate: 4.7%

Now Look at the 2021 results:
Samserganj → TMC won by 26,379. Voters under adjudication: 1,07,663.
Mothabari → TMC won by 56,573. Voters under adjudication: 78,797
Manikchak → TMC won by 33,878. Voters under adjudication: 65,421

In all 3 TMC-won seats: adjudicated voters outnumber the winning margin.

Baharampur → BJP won by 26,852. Voters under adjudication: 11,088
The one BJP win in our sample is also the one constituency where adjudication is lowest.

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

Good air, clean water, and food are fundamental to a good life. In that sense, they should be treated as fundamental rights.

But air quality has been steadily degrading, and it's not really part of the mainstream conversation. That needs to change. Right now, if you look at the site (link in comments), everything looks green. But as we get closer to the end of the year, things will start looking much worse.

Solving air pollution is hard, but the first step is simple: people need to know what they're breathing.

Right now, that's not possible. India does collect air quality data, but it's either locked away, too broad to tell you anything about your locality, or just not published at all. There's no single place a citizen can go to get a clear, neighbourhood-level picture.

So we set out to fix that.

Today, we're launching an open, pan-India air quality platform, built in partnership with leading organisations in the field. The goal: give citizens, schools, local governments, and communities direct access to the data that affects their daily lives.

At @RainmatterOrg , we've been committed to keeping this conversation alive, and this platform is our attempt at making that happen. All the data on the site is free and open, so others can build on top of it.

[Narendra Modi @narendramodi]

Today, India takes a defining step in its civil nuclear journey, advancing the second stage of its nuclear programme.

The indigenously designed and built Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam has attained criticality.

This advanced reactor, capable of producing more fuel than it consumes, reflects the depth of our scientific capability and the strength of our engineering enterprise. It is a decisive step towards harnessing our vast thorium reserves in the third stage of the programme.

A proud moment for India. Congratulations to our scientists and engineers.

[Asim KT @KTAsim]

A bridge in Tehran, AFTER USA bombed it, still stands!!

If this was in India, there wouldn't be need of a tomahawk missile. Some wind would bring it down.

[Rohit Sharma @ImRo45]

USD up to 64.18?? Pound has breached 100!! Looks like I'm going to have to find new vacation spots in the future *facepalm*

[Variety @Variety]

'The Voice of Hind Rajab' Censored in India Amid Fears Theatrical Release 'Would Break Up the India-Israel Relationship' (EXCLUSIVE) https://t.co/yft7vblgZq

[Tehran Tadhg @TadhgHickey]

It's revealing that when Israel bombs a gas field and thus threatens to destabilise the global economy further, Trump and the MSM are quick to reproach them. But when they slaughter tens of thousands of brown kids and rape Palestinian doctors to death, it's complicated.

[Saurav Das @SauravDassss]

*Torture of Rudra*

Rudra was taken to a senior officer’s room, where he was severely beaten, stripped naked multiple times, and subjected to extreme sexual violence and humiliation. He was threatened with extrajudicial killing and told his death would be staged as a suicide. He was also coerced into false statements and subjected to degrading acts intended to break his dignity and will.

*Systematic Pattern of Abuse*

All detainees were subjected to continuous physical assault, sexual violence, humiliation, and coercion. These testimonies collectively reveal a systematic campaign of state terror targeting labour activists, student activists, ANTi-displacement activists and those seeking justice.

The methods employed—including illegal abduction, incommunicado detention, custodial torture, sexual violence, caste-based degradation, forced confessions, and threats against families—constitute serious violations of the Constitution of India, the Protection of Human Rights Act, and India’s obligations under international law, including the UN Convention Against Torture.

The targeting of Aman to prevent the filing of a habeas corpus petition demonstrates a deliberate attempt to obstruct judicial processes and undermine the rule of law.

*DEMANDS*

1. Immediate cessation of illegal detentions, torture, and harassment of labour, student, and anti-displacement activists.
2. Institution of an independent judicial inquiry into these incidents.
3. Immediate prosecution and punishment of the Delhi Police Special Cell officials responsible.
4. Immediate release of all illegally seized digital devices and personal belongings of the activists.

End State Violence. Uphold Democratic Rights.

Press statement from *CAMPAIGN AGAINST STATE REPRESSION*
(AIRSO,AISF, APCR, ASA, BASF, BSM, Bhim Army, bsCEM, CEM, COLLECTIVE, CRPP, CSM, CTF, DISSC, DSU, DTF, Forum Against Repression Telangana, Fraternity, IAPL, Innocence Network, Karnataka Janashakti, LAA, Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan, Mazdoor Patrika, NAPM, Nazariya Magazine , Nishant Natya Manch, Nowruz, NTUI, People’s Watch, Rihai Manch, Samajwadi Janparishad, Smajwadi lok manch, Bahujan Samjavadi Mnach, United Peace Alliance, WSS, Y4S)

[Typical African @Joe__Bassey]

We live in a sick world.

[Asim KT @KTAsim]

@SimularAI Delegate to sai