Updated: September 23, 2020 6:48:50 pm
Ajit Mohan, MD of Facebook India, after a meeting with the parliamentary panel. (AND ME)
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ordered the Delhi Legislative Assembly panel not to take any enforcement action against Facebook India Vice President and Dr. Ajit Mohan until October 15 in connection with a subpoena asking him to stand before her regarding the northeast Delhi riots.
Mohan had approached the supreme court challenging the September 10 and 18 notifications issued by the Delhi Assembly peace and harmony committee seeking his presence before the panel.
The panel, which is investigating Facebook’s role in spreading alleged hate speech during the riots, has also decided not to hold any meetings until the Supreme Court resolves the matter.
A court of judges Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Aniruddha Bose and Krishna Murari issued notices to the Secretary of the Legislative Assembly, the ministries of Law and Justice, Interior, Electronics and Informatics, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, represented by the Secretary General, and Police of Delhi.
In its latest notice to Mohan, the panel, led by Delhi MLA Raghav Chadha, had warned the FB vice president that “failure to appear will be counted as a violation of the committee’s privilege and action will be taken.”
The committee, formed on March 2, had previously said that it “prima facie found Facebook complicit in the February 2020 Delhi riots on the premise of incriminating material produced by witnesses, as well as their scathing statements before the Committee.”
Read | Facebook snubs Assembly panel, Raghav Chadha threatens escalation
Earlier this week, Facebook’s chief trust and security officer, Vikram Langeh, had sent a letter to Chadha objecting to the notice and requesting that it be withdrawn from the market.
Langeh had said that the regulation of intermediaries such as Facebook was a right of the Union government, that Parliament’s Standing Committee on Information Technology was already examining the issues raised, and that law and order in Delhi is the responsibility of the Center. and not from the competition. State government.
The assembly committee said that according to a 2018 ruling from the Constitutional Court of the Supreme Court, the Delhi Legislative Assembly has legislative powers, and the Legislative Assembly’s Rules of Procedure and Business Conduct provide the committee with powers to convene and guarantee the presence of witnesses. .
The Assembly panel hearing began in the context of a Wall Street Journal report that claimed that a senior Facebook India policy executive had weighed in on internal communication to stop a permanent ban on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker from Telangana, after he allegedly shared community-laden posts on the social media platform.
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