Expected PM Modi to support net-neutrality: Rahul Gandhi

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said he expected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lend his support to the net-neutrality issue after being supported by social media users.

"PM Modi was supported by people on social media and I thought he would at least work in their favour," said Gandhi.

"They did not answer the question I asked them, they said they will protect net neutrality without giving specifics. They are taking away the internet. It's going to affect the youth of nation," he added.

Speaking on the net neutrality issue in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi said "Government wants to distribute the internet among big industrialists. Over one million people are fighting for net neutrality and the government is trying to carve out the net and hand it over to the corporates."

"I want to praise "nation's PM" again, not "yours" but nation's," Gandhi sarcastically said.

"(After [Mikhail] Gorbachev, no one has been praised as much US President Obama has praised PM Modi," he added.

Meanwhile, replying back to Rahul Gandhi's statement, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the BJP Government has never worked or ever will under any pressure from the corporate sector.

Net neutrality (also network neutrality, Internet neutrality, or net equality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication. The term was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003, as an extension of the longstanding concept of a common carrier.

Due to intense lobbying by telecom operators like Airtel and Vodafone, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is planning to allow them to block apps and websites to extort more money from consumers and businesses - an extreme violation of net neutrality.

The TRAI has released a consultation paper with 20 questions spread across 118 complicated pages and wants the general public to use the e-mail route to give their views by April 24.

As of 2015, India has no laws governing net neutrality, which would promise all the internet users to be treated equally on the internet, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication. There have already been a few violations of net neutrality in India by some service providers.

The TRAI consultation paper released in March this year was criticized for being one sided and having confusing statements. It has been condemned by both politicians and Indian internet users. As on April 18, over 800,000 emails have been received by TRAI demanding net neutrality.