Congress demands criminal investigation into Facebook and WhatsAapp-BJP collision

In the wake of the second expose about the Facebook and WhatsApp-BJP collision by America’s newspaper The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the Congress has demanded criminal investigation along with the JPC probe into the matter.

Addressing media, leader of the Congress party in Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, said on Monday that “Facebook and WhatsApp’s role in subverting India’s democracy is now unquestionable and beyond doubt”.

Referring to the latest report published by WSJ, Chowdhury said Facebook’s India policy head, Ankhi Das, referring to Modi’s victory in 2014 elections had written an internal email to her employees saying, “We lit a fire to his social media campaign and the rest is of course history”.

“Evidently, she was elated at his victory and the big role her company, Facebook played,” said Chowdhury.

“The article states how Ms Das boasted that she has successfully lobbied with the BJP to include Facebook’s priorities in their election manifesto and ‘now they just need to go and win the elections’. She even circulated internal predictions of a BJP victory,” said Chowdhury

“Their complicity in propagating hate speech and fake news to favour the BJP in elections is confirmed. What makes it worse is that Facebook’s global leadership team was well aware of the biases and partisanship of their India leadership team but were willing participants,” added Chowdhury.

Saying that Congress will not allow hard-won democracy to be manipulated and tarnished, on behalf of the Congress party Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury demanded :

• A Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation immediately.
• A criminal investigation into the affairs of Facebook India and the people named.
• All pending approvals and licenses for Facebook and WhatsApp to be put on hold until the investigations are completed.
• Suspension of Facebook India’s leadership team with immediate effect until the conclusion of the investigations.
• An inquiry by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology into the activities of all Heads of Public Policy teams of foreign technology companies operating in India and establish a code of conduct.