Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 14: While the union information and technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw only refuted the Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg’s claim on the Indian Parliamentary elections last year, the BJP-led Parliamentary panel has decided to go a step further by seeking the Meta chief’s apology for “tarnishing the image of the country.”
The BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who heads the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, said on Tuesday that the panel would summon the social media giant for apology for the chairman’s comments that India’s ruling party lost the Lok Sabha elections last year, though he was not totally off the mark in his summation.
“My committee will summon Meta for this incorrect information. Incorrect information about any democratic country tarnishes its image. This organisation will have to apologise to the Indian Parliament and the people here for this mistake,” Mr Dubey said in a post on X. He said he would send summons to Meta and would call upon the platform to apologise to India’s Parliament.
He was reacting to Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s criticism of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who owns the controlling stake in the Meta group of companies, for making a “factually incorrect” statement that like in most other countries in India too the government in power at the time of Covid have lost the elections in 2024 due to issues arising out of the pandemic.
“It is disappointing to see misinformation from Mr Zuckerberg himself. Let’s uphold facts and credibility,” Mr Vaishnaw said, tagging Meta on X and other social media platforms. “From free food for 800 million, 2.2 billion free vaccines, and aid to nations worldwide during COVID, to leading India as the fastest-growing major economy, PM Modi’s decisive 3rd-term victory is a testament to good governance and public trust,” he added.
“We have decided that we will summon the people of Meta. The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has given a statement and shown that after Covid-19, an atmosphere has been created against the government where he has also mentioned India,” Mr Dubey said on Tuesday. “This statement by Mark Zuckerberg is alarming and shows that he is interfering in the democracy of the country and is misleading the world by giving wrong information that BJP-NDA has lost,” he added.
“We have decided that we will summon the people of Meta. They will have to apologise or else action will be taken by our committee. We will speak to the members of the committee and between January 20 and January 24, we will ask them to be present,” the BJP MP said.
Mr Zuckerberg made the remark while he was on an episode of a podcast on January 10. “A lot of people in the United States focus on this as an American phenomenon, but I kind of think that the reaction to Covid probably caused a breakdown and trust in a lot of governments around the world, because 2024 was a big election year around the world. And you know there are all these countries, India, just like a ton of countries, that had elections and the incumbents, basically lost every single one of them.” Zuckerberg said on the podcast.
He suggested that the Covid pandemic caused the erosion of trust on the governments in office then. He incorrectly cited India’s example in this connection. “There is some sort of a global phenomenon – whether it was because of inflation or the economic policies to deal with Covid or just how the governments dealt with Covid, seems to have this effect that is global, not just the U.S., but like a very broad decrease in trust, at least in the set incumbents and maybe, in sort of these democratic institutions overall. It seems to have had this effect that’s global,” he had said.
In the 2024 election, the ruling BJP lost the majority on its own as in the 2014 and 2019 elections, but the ruling alliance led by the party stayed in power paving the way for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third straight term.