Facing criticism from several opposition political parties in India for its alleged bias favouring the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Facebook has banned a BJP politician T. Raja Singh for for posting hateful content on the social media platform.
"We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to Facebook’s decision to remove his account, according to the statement.
Facebook had earlier taken down some posts by Raja Singh after the WSJ had reported on an alleged bias favouring the ruling party.
Raja Singh was at the centre of controversy over Facebook’s content policies. He had even claimed that his official account was 'hacked and blocked' in 2018.
Facebook’s moves comes a day after a Parliamentary panel questioned the company's India head, Ajit Mohan, for over two hours, with both BJP and Congress members of the panel accusing the social media giant of colluding and influencing opinion, a charge denied by the firm.
The WSJ had earlier cited interviews with unnamed Facebook insiders to claim that one of its senior India policy executives intervened in internal communication to stop a permanent ban on the BJP MLA from Telangana after he allegedly made communally charged posts.
On Tuesday, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had also written to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg accusing the social media platform's employees of supporting people from a political predisposition that lost successive elections, and "abusing" the Prime Minister and senior cabinet ministers.
(With PTI Inputs)
