Facebook Bans BJP MLA & Owaisi Critic Raja Singh For Violating Hate Speech Policy; Know All About The Controversy

Facebook has banned BJP leader T Raja for violating its hate speech policy. This step has come after the Wall Street Journal report alleged a nexus of BJP and Facebook.

New Delhi: After controversy erupted over social networking site Facebook favouring hate content posted by leaders of the right-wing, it has banned the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA T Raja Singh for violating its hate speech policies. Singh who is part of the Telangana Unit was named in the report published by Wall Street Journal on August 14 that alleged the social media site favoured the BJP. The report mentioned about Singh's permanent removal after a communal post against Rohingya Muslims was stopped after a Senior India policy executive of Facebook intervened in internal communication. Singh is known for his inflammatory speeches which have made headlines several times. For example in 2017, old Hyderabad as 'mini-Pakistan’ in 2017, he has also called Kashmiri Muslim traitors and said that people visiting the holy site Amarnath should not buy anything from the community. In 2019, in a report by ANI, he alleged that AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi was  'financially supporting' terrorists. ALSO READ: PM CARES Fund: Initial Corpus Of Rs 2.25 Lakhs Given By PM Modi, Received Rs 3,076.62 Cr In 5 Days Voluntarily The WSJ report has caused a furore and the opposition has alleged that BJP has attacked democracy in the country. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also said that international media has 'exposed Facebook’s & WhatsApp's brazen assault on India's democracy & social harmony'. On Wednesday a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology led by Congress's Shashi Tharoor also held a meeting with Facebook representatives. Although no information was divulged, the Committee Chairperson Tharoor, tweeted, " We met for some three & a half hours & unanimously agreed to resume the discussion later, incl with representatives of Facebook.’

In response to overwhelming media interest in the meeting of the ParliamentaryStandingCommittee on InformationTechnology that just adjourned, this is all I can say: we met for some three&a half hours & unanimously agreed to resume the discussion later, incl w/ reps of @Facebook.

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) September 2, 2020

The WSJ report  titled "Facebook Hate-Speech Rules Collide With Indian Politics: Company executive opposed move to ban controversial politician", also alleged that Facebook favoured BJP to influence the electorate by deliberately ignoring 'hate -speech' content from right-wing leaders. On Tuesday, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote to Facebook the company's senior managing employees indulge in objectionable terms while still working in Facebook India. He said that in the run up to 2019 General Elections in India, there was a concerted effort by Facebook India management to not just delete pages or substantially reduce their reach but also offer no recourse or right of appeal to affected people who are supportive of the right-of-centre ideology.