BJP govt insulting India's democracy on world stage: SP on Dorsey's claims

Reacting to the Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's allegation that the Indian Government threatened to shut down the microblogging site's operation in India, Samajwadi Party(SP) on Tuesday accused BJP-led Central government of insulting India's democracy on the world stage. SP also accused the BJP government of being dictatorial.

"The BJP government's secrets are being exposed on the world stage! Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that during the farmer's protest, the central government used to pressurize Twitter not to show content critical of the BJP government," SP wrote on its official Twitter handle.

"Also threatened to raid their offices in India. Embarrassing. By displaying its dictatorial thinking, the BJP government is insulting India's democracy on the world stage," the Twitter post added.

 

In an interview with the YouTube channel 'Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar', on Monday, Dorsey who stepped down from Twitter's board last year, alleged that the Indian government had put pressure on Twitter and said that it will shut down the company in India and raid the houses of its employees.

Jack Dorsey in the interview said that there were requests around farmers' protests to shut Twitter in the country.".....India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers' protests, around particular journalists who were critical of the government and it manifested in ways such as we will shut Twitter down in India, India is a big marketplace for us. We would raid the homes of your employees, which they did and we will shut down your offices if you don't follow suit and this is India, a democratic country, " Dorsey is heard saying in the interview on the YouTube channel," he said.

However, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar responded to Dorsey's claims, saying that under him, Twitter was in "repeated and continuous violations of India law" and at times "weaponised misinformation".\

After Dorsey's allegation, Congress also launched an all-out attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party government at the centre asking why it was desperately "trying to gag the voices" of truth and opposition and crush all those who were trying to ask questions.

"What is PM Modi afraid of?" asked Supriya Shrinate, the Congress spokesperson and Chairperson of the Social Media and Digital Platforms of the party during a press conference here on Tuesday.

Reacting to the allegations made by Dorsey, who claimed that Twitter faced pressure and intimidation from the Modi government during farmers' agitation, she said, Prime Minister Modi was behaving like a coward and trying to muzzle all the voices of dissent and those who were trying to ask genuine questions.