Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday claimed that his social media account had been restricted in India and questioned Meta over the alleged action, saying the company had not explained the reason behind it.
In a post on X, Kejriwal said enquiries with Meta's India office revealed that his account had been restricted and was unavailable in India.
He alleged that company officials neither provided a reason for the restriction nor explained how it could be lifted. According to Kejriwal, emails sent to Meta had received only routine acknowledgements.
Sharing a screenshot of his account status page displaying the message "Unavailable in some locations", Kejriwal criticised the company's response, calling it "pretty bad service".
He also took a swipe at the Centre, saying, "Don't bow down to the prime minister, else he will allow you to run only his own account in India."
There was no immediate response from Meta on Kejriwal's claims.
Kejriwal's allegation comes amid heightened scrutiny of Meta in India.
Facing a probe over alleged advertisements related to Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM) following a media report, Meta has accepted that illegal content was promoted and paid promotions were carried out for a specific audience, reported news agency ANI citing sources on Wednesday. ANI's sources said the company would be called again over the concerns.
The sources also said that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had apologised to the government over Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), deepfake content and operational errors on the platform.
"Mark Zuckerberg sent his apologies for the CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) content, deepfake content and errors in operating the platform. It was made clear to them that they are not covered under the Intermediary definition. They select who receives the content. Safe harbour under IT Act not applicable," a source said.
On Wednesday, a high-level Meta delegation led by Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan met Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Secretary S Krishnan. During the meeting, which lasted around 45 minutes, Meta officials explained the reasons behind the erroneous takedown of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's video.
The meeting came after the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology demanded an "unqualified apology" from Zuckerberg over the removal of the Prime Minister's video from Facebook, warning that the platform could lose its legal immunity in India.
Earlier, BJP MP and Parliamentary Standing Committee chairperson Nishikant Dubey said Meta had admitted that the Prime Minister's video had remained unavailable for over four hours and warned that safe harbour protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act should be withdrawn if Zuckerberg failed to apologise.
Meta had earlier said that the Prime Minister's Facebook video on action against examination paper leaks had been removed due to a technical error and was later restored.
(With inputs from ANI)