India / FB denies claims of political bias at Parliament panel meet: Reports

New Delhi: Under attack from Congress and BJP, Facebook India Managing Director Ajit Mohan on Wednesday rejected allegations of bias against any political party.

Appearing before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, Mohan said the social networking company strictly followed the government guidelines while dealing with hate speech and had deleted 22.5 million objectionable posts world over this year.

At the outset, Committee chairman Shashi Tharoor is learnt to have sought an explanation on reports appearing in a section of the international media pm allegations of Facebook favouring the BJP.

Mohan is learnt to have told the Committee that the company did not have any policy of favouring a particular political party.

BJP members Nishikant Dubey and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore were understood to have raised the issue of links of some Facebook employees with the Congress party.

Mohan said some officials at Facebook were employees of an international consultancy firm which had worked with some ministries during the UPA tenure for assessment of government initiatives.

“There is no relationship with the Congress,” Mohan is learnt to have told the Committee.

“In response to overwhelming media interest in the meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology that just adjourned, this is all I can say: we met for some three and a half hours and unanimously agreed to resume the discussion later, including with representatives of Facebook,” Tharoor said on Twitter.

Earlier, Tharoor’s announcement that the panel would like to hear from Facebook about a report claiming that the social media platform ignored applying its hate-speech rules to politicians of the BJP in India, had evoked a strong reaction from BJP members of the panel.

Dubey had accused Tharoor of using the Committee platform to further his party’s political agenda and even demanded his removal as chairman.

AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal has written two letters to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seeking explanation on reports appearing in a section of the international media alleging favours to the BJP in the hope of support for launching new projects in India.

IT Minister Ravishankar Prasad too had shot off a letter to Zuckerberg accusing Facebook employees of supporting people from the Congress party.

Prasad had also alleged “bias and inaction” by individuals in the Facebook India team on complaints by people supportive of right-of-centre ideology.