Facebook India MD appear before Parliamentary panel

India’s Parliamentary panel for IT questioned Facebook India head Ajit Mohan after recent reports stated that the social media giant was reluctant to ban right-wing outfit Bajrang Dal over concerns of security of its staff.

The Parliamentary standing committee on Information Technology was chaired by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. Mohan was deposed before the committee, after the panel had summoned him on the issue of citizens’ data safety. He was accompanied by Facebook India’s public policy director Shivnath Thukral.

Congress MP Karti Chidambaram also questioned Mohan about a recent newspaper report on the banning of Bajrang Dal on Facebook, news agency quoted sources as saying.

The report stated that despite an internal assessment that called for a ban on the right-wing outfit, Facebook had not cracked down on the Hindu nationalist organisation due to financial considerations and concerns over the safety of its employees.

Facebook Inc is also facing the legal ire in the United States and it could be forced to sell WhatsApp and Instagram after the US Federal Trade Commission and almost all US states have filed lawsuits against the social media platform, claiming it used a “buy or bury” strategy to kill rivals and keep smaller competitors at bay.

Last month, a former Facebook employee made startling revelations before the Delhi Assembly’s Committee on Peace and Harmony about the functioning of the platform and its biases towards politically-connected people.

Ex employee Mark Luckie claimed that top managerial posts at Facebook are given to those who have good political affiliations.

“Repeated interference of the top heads of Facebook on content moderating teams has led to compromising on community guidelines,” he reportedly said.

The witness during the course of a deposition made extremely scathing revelations on the internal functioning of Facebook, thus giving insights on the entire organisational structure of Facebook globally as well as regionally, the panel said in its official statement.