The fast-growing community of online bloggers has borne the brunt of the government’s decision to block some 20 websites in a post-Mumbai show of force. Some of the websites that have been blocked are Dalitstan.org, Clickatell.com, Hinduhumanrights.org and Hinduunity.com.

But the most harried Internet users were the bloggers, who couldn’t access Blogspot.com, Typepad.com or Geocities.com pages. Sources in ISPs in Delhi as well as Mumbai confirmed that the one blog government has asked them to block is Princesskimberly.blogspot.com.

It seems the order posed technical problems, resulting in a blanket ban on all blogs. ‘‘You cannot block a single page on blogspot.com, which is why all of them are getting blocked,’’ said Neha Viswanathan, Regional Editor, South Asia, Globalvoicesonline.org from London.

The Indian order was issued on July 13, sources in the Ministry of Telecom confirmed, though the Computer Emergency Response Team (India), part of a global cyber-security network set up three years ago, did not announce the bans officially.

Only sources in several ISPs such as Spectranet and Airtel confirmed that they had received the site-blocking order. R Grewal, a spokesperson for Spectranet confirmed: ‘‘We received a list of over 20 websites to block from the Department of Telecom, and this (Blogspot.com) was one of them.’’

Apparently, all the websites blocked are said to express “extreme religious views.”

MTNL officials said they were handed a 22-page document detailing the sites to block a month ago. “It came from the National Informatics Centre (NIC). It was the first time that they had done something of this nature,’’ says RH Sharma, sub-divisional engineer for MTNL in Delhi.

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