T Raja Singh asked if Facebook was operating under pressure from Congress. (Proceedings)
Hyderabad:
Banned by Facebook on Thursday for hateful content and labeled a “dangerous individual,” controversial Telangana BJP MLA T Raja Singh claimed that it had been more than a year since he left the social network’s website and asked if the company was working under “pressure” from Congress. . Defending Facebook as “a neutral platform,” Singh said linking it to BJP is not fair. He said he will write to Facebook to open a new account for him and promised to follow all the rules.
“I will write to Facebook to open my official account. I will follow all rules and regulations to use it. I must be given the right to use the Facebook account and I will seek your permission,” said the BJP leader known for the inflammatory speeches that generally target to Muslims.
Singh, the sole legislator for the Telangana BJP, claimed that he had not had a Facebook account since April 2019 and that the pages that the social media site now banned could have been created by his followers.
Under fire for weeks for his handling of hate speech by those linked to the ruling party, Facebook said Thursday that it had banned Raja Singh from its platform and Instagram for violating its policy on content promoting violence and hatred.
In reaction to the ban, Singh said that he had written a letter to the Hyderabad Police Cybercrime Department on October 8, 2018 that his official verified Facebook page had been hacked. Reopened a new page which “was removed / not published in April 2019”.
“So since April 2019, I have not been on Facebook, so there is no question of banning (me). Is Facebook working under pressure from Congress,” Singh said in a short statement.
In a separate video message, the lawmaker said leaders such as Rahul Gandhi made “false” statements against the BJP and Prime Minister Modi, using social media platforms and demanded that, after a thorough investigation, the accounts of Congress and All India Majlis-e- by Asaduddin Owaisi Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) parts should be removed from social media sites.
On Thursday, Facebook said it had banned Raja Singh “for violating our policy that prohibits those who promote or participate in acts of violence and hate from having a presence on our platform.”
After the ban, Singh has been designated under Facebook’s Dangerous People and Organizations policy, and he will not be allowed to maintain a presence on the platform in the future.
The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and is what led to Facebook’s decision to delete your account, according to a company statement.
Facebook, which counts India among its largest markets with more than 300 million users, has been in the eye of a storm after a Wall Street Journal report alleged that its content policies favored the ruling BJP.
The report alleged that Facebook had ignored posts containing hate speech by Raja Singh to protect its business interests in India, sparking a political dispute between the opposition Congress and the ruling BJP.
A parliamentary panel led by congressional deputy Shashi Tharoor convened representatives from Facebook to discuss the issue on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had also written to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing employees of the social media platform of supporting politically minded people who lost successive elections and “abusing” the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers.
(With PTI inputs)
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