BJP Accuses Manish Tewari of Using Facebook's Management to Influence Politics; Congress Leader Hits Back

BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya on Thursday targeted the Congress for using the services of think-tanks and its members to gain access to Facebook’s management in a bid to influence the political process in India.

Malviya said Congress leader Manish Tewari wrote a letter to Facebook management on August 18, in which he said the social media giant's management could get in touch with his senior policy advisor, Bharat Gopalaswamy, in the United States.

Citing the letter, Malviya in a series of tweets questioned if Indian MPs can hire lobbyists in US masquerading as advisors?

"This is a serious revelation and troublesome on multiple grounds… Whose interests do these US based lobbyists serve when they advise Congress MP Manish Tewari?" he asked.

Malviya said Gopalaswamy served as the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council where Tewari also worked.

"Interestingly it is the same Atlantic Council which controls and guides Facebook’s effort in dealing with political propaganda," he said.

The BJP leader said when Facebook purged a large number of pages last year, the following of those pro-right wing pages that were purged was 10 times that of pro-Congress pages taken down. "This process was also led by the Atlantic Council," he said.

Responding to the allegation in a series of tweets, Tewari said, "Nothing demonstrates alleged collusion between certain elements at Facebook and certain elements in BJP than tweeting of my letter to Facebook senior management sent August 18 in the evening by Amit Malviya. Who in Facebook gave letter to Amit Malviya without it being even formally acknowledged by Facebook?"

The senior Congress leader explained that Gopalaswamy was director of South Asia Centre at Atlantic Council.

"He is an Indian. He advises me pro bono on policy issues. I am surprised that Amit Malviya who comes from a party that tom-toms NRIs and organises massive events abroad like Howdy Modi would like to paint my taking advise from a gentleman of Indian origin pro-bono as blasphemy. He should first answer who in Facebook management gave him my email addressed to their senior management asking valid question without it being acknowledged," added Tewari.

A report in the Wall Street Journal published earlier had claimed that the social media giant refused to apply its rules against hate speech to certain ruling party politicians in India. In the report, the US newspaper 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 a BJP MLA from Telangana after he allegedly made communally charged posts.

Reacting to the controversy, Facebook on Monday said the company's social media platform prohibits hate speech and content that incites violence, adding these policies are enforced globally without regard to political affiliation.

"While we know there is more to do, we're making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits of our process to ensure fairness and accuracy," a Facebook spokesperson said.