BJP hits back as Rahul raises net neutrality issue

Speaker intervenes after Prasad reacts sharply to Rahul's charge of govt giving away internet space to corporates

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Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan was forced to stand up and intervene during an unscheduled argument on net neutrality between Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Union Telecommunications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday.

Mahajan reminded both the treasury and opposition benches about the rules of procedure being repeatedly violated in the House. Looking at Rahul Gandhi, she said there was no provision for questions and answers to be taken up on any issue during the Zero Hour. She also told the opposition that it was completely wrong to place the Prime Minister of the country in the dock on every house being raised in the House. She said nothing would go on the record with regard to the net neutrality issue during Zero Hour.

Her remonstration came shortly after Rahul Gandhi stood up in the House to ask the NDA Government to change the law or write a new law on net neutrality.

He said that one million people were fighting for net neutrality, and accused the government was trying to carve out the net and hand it over to the corporate.

"I would request the government to stop the TRAI's decision," he said

Responding to that charge, Prasad said, "In the world, on the social media, PM Modi is very respected. Today, Rahul Gandhiji speaks about internet neutrality, but we would like to know how and why the UPA Government blocked Twitter handles. The Prime Minister has said that everyone should have access to the internet. We are not under pressure from any corporate on the net neutrality issue."

"We want to tell the House that our government supports the youth's right to internet," he added.

The Congress Party had earlier demanded that the NDA Government order the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to scrap the regulatory framework paper under the Section 25 of the TRAI Act.

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.