The telecom secretary, Mr. R. Chandrashekar said on Thursday that India won’t censure social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter but they will have to follow the rules of the land.

“We don’t believe in censorship of any kind. All over the world, every company has to operate in accordance with the law. Any company wishing to operate in a country has to follow the laws of the land,” said Mr Chandra Shekhar. He said that their is a need to develop some mechanism to abide by the law.

Last week the government had given the go ahead for the prosecution of the executives of the top internet firms including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, for alleged offense of promoting enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration. The matter is still going on in the courts.

Advocate N.K. Kaul, appearing for Google India, had argued that “the issue relates to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression and suppressing it was not possible as the right to freedom of speech in democratic India separates us from a totalitarian regime like China”.

However, the Delhi High Court judge Suresh Kait, hearing the case, had warned Google India and Facebook India that websites can be “blocked” like in China if they fail to devise a mechanism to check and remove objectionable material from their web pages.