TikTok India Return Rumours Debunked by Company: Report

TikTok on Friday denied circulating reports that it had been unbanned in India. The app was first banned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in June 2020, due to concerns regarding national security and data privacy. The rumours of a possible comeback surfaced on Friday, after the official website of the Chinese social media platform became accessible for a brief period to some users.

TikTok Remains Banned in India

In a statement to TechCrunch, a TikTok representative confirmed that the social media platform remains banned in India, despite reports suggesting otherwise. It is not accessible to users.

“We have not restored access to TikTok in India and continue to comply with the Government of India's directive,” the spokesperson said.

Furthermore, a senior MeitY official, who asked to remain anonymous, also confirmed to the publication that the government had not “unblocked or done anything” to allow the ByteDance-owned app to be accessed in the country.

On Friday, rumours of a possible comeback of TikTok surfaced when the Chinese social media platform became accessible to some users in India. At the time, Gadgets 360 staff were also able to access the TikTok website and navigate to the login page. While we managed to successfully create an account and log in with the credentials, a banner appeared on the OTP submission page, stating, “TikTok is banned in India and we are working on it”.

As per the report, this issue might have been caused due to a network-level misconfiguration. However, this is not the first time that such rumours of a possible TikTok comeback have surfaced. In 2022, the social media platform reportedly became briefly accessible due to being inadvertently unblocked by some internet service providers.

Gadgets 360 staff can confirm that the TikTok website has again become inaccessible in India.

The app was banned in India in 2020, under the Section 69A of the IT Act. It empowers the government to block public access to computer resources in the in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, or friendly relations with foreign states.

Since its ban due to rising tensions between India and China, TikTok has been exploring new ways to enter the Indian market. In 2022, ByteDance was reportedly planning to partner with local company Hiranandani Group to bring back TikTok. However, nothing materialised at the time. If it did, it could have paved the way for other banned apps from companies such as Alibaba and Tencent to re-enter the country.