Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday sought an apology from Congress President Rahul Gandhi for dividing society and manipulating voters in connection with Cambridge Analytica data breach row.

Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a tweet, “Now that Cambridge Analytica‘s role in manipulating elections is clear & Facebook has assured to stop it and maintain integrity of India’s elections”.

“Probity demands that @RahulGandhi should apologise & promise not to manipulate voters and divide the society in future!”, Prasad added in his tweet.

Now that Cambridge Analytica‘s role in manipulating elections is clear & Facebook has assured to stop it and maintain integrity of India’s elections, probity demands that @RahulGandhi should apologise & promise not to manipulate voters and divide the society in future! https://t.co/xo4iJUJsBw

— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) April 11, 2018

On 10 April, Facebook founder CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before US Congress. At the hearing, Zuckerberg said that Facebook wants to ensure the integrity of elections and announced that the social networking giant will launch Data Abuse Bounty to reward people who would report any misuse of data by app developers.

Facing a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees over the alleged hijacking of data of millions of Facebook users by British firm Cambridge Analytica for 2016 US presidential election, Zuckerberg said he knew the importance of the upcoming polls in countries, including India, Hungary and Brazil, and his company wanted to ensure protection of integrity in these elections.

Facebook says this programme will reward people with first-hand knowledge and proof of cases where an app on Facebook platform “collects and transfers people’s data to another party to be sold, stolen or used for scams or political influence”.

Facebook says it will review “all legitimate reports” and respond “as quickly as possible” on identifying a credible threat. If data abuse is confirmed, “we will shut down the offending app and take legal action”.

Earlier, over the alleged data leak of Indian voters’, the Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said “we are very tough when it comes to data protection in India” and had warned Facebook of ‘strong action’ if any attempt was made by them to influence the country’s electoral process through undesirable means.