NEW DELHI: Amidst a raging row over alleged political bias on the part of Facebook from both sides of the divide, the company’s head of operations in India, Facebook India managing director Ajit Mohan, appeared before India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee for IT and was questioned for several hours by its members.
The panel, headed by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, is currently examining the alleged misuse of social media platforms in the country. While Facebook’s public policy head had come under fire for alleged favourable treatment meted out to the ruling BJP, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has now written a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg alleging the reverse.
The minister had written that many senior employees from its managing director to others were “people who belong to a particular political belief” creating trouble. While details of what transpired in the closed-door hearing were not released, Tharoor tweeted that they had “met for some three and a half hours and unanimously agreed to resume the discussion later, including with representatives of Facebook.” According to reports, the panel was not able to conclude its examination of the company’s representatives and decided to meet again.