New Delhi— Social media giant Facebook blocked a prominent page being used by farmers to disseminate information on their morcha and to “counter misinformation”, on Sunday evening before it was restored following massive uproar.

The page called Kisan Ekta Morcha having more than one lakh followers, has piloted itself as the official voice of farmers protest where they share interviews by farmer leaders, latest updates and press conferences by the farm unions. Countering misleading information and false propaganda is another key objective behind initiating the page by Kisan IT Cell. According to Baljeet Singh Sandhu, IT Cell head, a Facebook live was being streamed from the page where they were talking about how they reached more than 90 lakh users in less than a week of being launched when they received a notification that the page is unpublished now. “It happened without any warning. The reason cited by Facebook was violation of community guidelines on spam while we have not published any content that quantifies this reason,” he later said. Kisan Ekta Morcha also tweeted and put a post on Instagram showing that the page had been unpublished by FB.

The page was removed at 7PM and was accessible again around 9:30 PM as farmers and a large number of supporters accused the social media platform for silencing their voice. FB later said that it “regretted the inconvenience” caused and has restored the page. It, however, did not elaborate why the page was removed.

FB is already battling allegations and criticism for favouring the BJP. Two weeks ago, complaints poured in for FB and Instagram for ‘shadow banning’ certain hashtags like farmersprotest, Sikh etc while protests against the controversial farm laws gain momentum across the country.