 "Not okay with profit-making firms lecturing us on democracy: IT minister")
India’s law and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, on Thursday, said it was not okay for profit-minded companies such as Twitter to lecture India on democracy and its values.
Speaking to ANI, Prasad said: “There are 100-crore social media users in India, I am happy. Let them earn money, allow users to criticise us. Most welcome. But when these profit companies lecture us on democracy, then I would like to ask a question.”
“India is a democracy as elections are fair. We won Assam and lost Bengal. The Independent judiciary asks tough questions. Media questions senior ministers. That's freedom of speech and democracy. Under the garb of this, if you won't comply with rules, it's a misplaced argument,” Prasad added.
The law minister also touched upon Twitter’s decision to flag the tweets of some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as ‘manipulated media’.
“As Law and IT minister, I've no comments to offer. It is for Police to investigate. But I'd like to flag that if Twitter has a norm of declaring a particular tweet as manipulative/unmanipulated, why was it not applied in the Ghaziabad case?” Prasad asked, referring to the recent incident of a Muslim man being attacked and his beard being shaved, allegedly on communal grounds, in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad.
While the victim had publicly alleged that he was attacked because he was a Muslim and that he was forced to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’, Police investigating the matter have ruled out the communal angle and claimed that the man was beaten because of a dispute over ‘amulets’ that he had sold to the accused persons.
Prasad also talked about Twitter not complying with India’s new IT rules for digital media intermediaries.
“When Indian companies do business or pharma companies go to manufacture in the US, do they follow American laws or not? If you have to do business here, you're welcome to criticise the PM, all of us, but you have to obey India's constitution and rules,” he was quoted as saying by ANI.
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