Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday, 1 September, slammed Facebook and WhatsApp for their "brazen assault on India's democracy and social harmony," as he called for an investigation into their affairs.
“No one, let alone a foreign company, can be allowed to interfere in our nation’s affairs. They must be investigated immediately and when found guilty, punished,” Gandhi wrote on Twitter.
His comments came after a new Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report detailed how Facebook India executive Ankhi Das posted messages in support of the BJP for several years on a Facebook group of the company's employees.
According to the WSJ report, her posts had even detailed her efforts to help the saffron party win the 2014 national elections.
WSJ accessed postings of Das on Facebook's internal communications systems that were perceived to be openly supportive of the BJP. “We lit a fire to his social media campaign and the rest is of course history,” she wrote on the group. “It’s taken thirty years of grassroots work to rid India of state socialism finally,” read another post by her.
In an earlier investigative report, WSJ had pointed out how Ankhi Das had opposed enforcement of hate-speech rules against BJP and other Hindutva leaders.
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