Hyderabad: Facebook, facing a political storm over the alleged pro-BJP bias by some of its top officials in India, has taken belated action and banned BJP’s controversial MLA in Telangana T Raja Singh for his alleged hate filled posts.
Raja Singh was notorious for using his Facebook page to issue threats of violence against Muslim minority and posting provocative and Islamophobic messages despite innumerable police complaints. His Instagram account has also been removed.
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The action today came at a time when Facebook India head Ajit Mohan appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the alleged bias they had shown towards the ruling BJP during elections and ran a campaign targeting the opposition and religious minorities. The Committee headed by a senior opposition Congress MP Shashi Tharoor will continue the questioning in the days ahead.
Facebook’s action against Singh was first reported by the same American newspaper Wall Street Journal which ran a series of reports exposing how Facebook officials in India had taken a lenient view of his hate campaign.
Close to BJP leaders
After WSJ’s reports, Facebook’s India policy head Ms Ankhi Das, believed to be close to the BJP leaders, had come under sharp public scrutiny as she had opposed any action against Singh.
Singh’s posts on Facebook during the course of the last few years had created trouble in Hyderabad several times as he called Muslims “anti national” and “traitors”. Commenting on the presence of about 3,000 Rohingya refugees in Hyderabad, Singh had called for shooting them to death.
“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”, the newspaper quoted Facebook’s spokesperson in USA.
Singh had five profiles with about 300,000 followers on Facebook and all of them have been removed.
But Singh has already expressed his dissociation with the Facebook pages saying his account was hacked and blocked in 2018. In a statement in August he said that he had his official account only on the Twitter and Youtube.
Singh, who represents Goshamahal assembly constituency in Hyderabad, is the lone BJP MLA in Telangana and known for hate filled remarks on various issues.
Documents brought to light by WSJ also showed that Das had supported the BJP in 2014 elections which saw Narendra Modi leading his party to power in India. “We lit a fire to his social media campaign, the rest is history. It’s taken 30 years of grassroots work to rid India of state socialism finally”, she reportedly said in one of her internal communications.
Reacting to the reports of Facebook’s action against him Singh today expressed his thanks to the US based social media giant. "Among the pages on my name, I don’t have any official page. I am thankful for closing them. I don’t have any official account of Facebook since 2018. It was hacked then and was not allowed to use it again. I need an account for my personal use. I will not violate the Facebook policies. I will send a mail to Facebook seeking permission to open my page”, he said.
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