After a series of allegations of being biased towards the posts of BJP, social media giant Facebook on Thursday banned party leader T Raja Singh.
The politician was banned for violating Facebook’s policy on content promoting hate and violence, said a spokesperson.
“We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement, reported NDTV.
It further said that the process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led to Facebook’s decision to remove his account.
However, last month, T Raja Singh had claimed in a video over twitter that he holds no official account on Facebook.
“I have got to know many FB pages are using my name. Let me clarify I’m not having any official page, I’m not responsible for any of their posts,” he had said.
The controversy over the Facebook-BJP tie-up aroused after the WSJ reported that Facebook refused to apply hate speech rules to certain BJP politicians, while the social media giant has asserted that its policies are enforced globally without regard to political affiliation.
Later, the Congress had written to the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for details on steps being taken to investigate the allegations that it does not apply hate speech rules to the post of BJP members.
In the letter, Congress party said, “We urge you to let us know what steps your company is planning to take to investigate these matters… will also be pursuing legislative and judicial actions in India to ensure a foreign company cannot continue to cause social disharmony in our nation for pursuit of private profits.”
READ: Congress writes another letter to Mark Zuckerberg over reports alleging ‘Facebook-BJP nexus’
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also raised the issue over twitter referring to an article by TIME magazine. “America’s TIME magazine has revealed the WhatsApp-BJP nexus. In India, 40 crore people use WhatsApp and now WhatsApp wants to come in the money-transfer Apps industry also. For this, permission is required from the Modi government. This is the reason for the nexus.”
Yesterday, in the parliamentary panel meeting of over two hours, Facebook officials were asked to list instances where they acted against hate speech.
T Raja Singh’s alleged posts were also cited by members of the opposition.