The bitter war of words between the BJP and the Congress on the Facebook controversy is set to escalate further as BJP MPs Nishikant Dubey and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore have written letters to the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla seeking the removal of their Congress counterpart Shashi Tharoor as the chief of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology on the grounds that the latter chose to speak to the media about his intention to summon officials of the social networking major instead of discussing the matter first in the parliamentary panel.
Both sides have raised privilege issues against each other in the committee.
Subsequent to a report in the American English daily Wall Street Journal that claimed that Facebook refused to apply hate speech rules to BJP and RSS leaders, Tharoor had spoken about summoning the company’s officials before the committee due to the “serious nature” of allegations.
“Issuing statements as to who would be summoned and what would be the agenda of the meeting is absolutely uncalled for and is violative of the procedures of the Lok Sabha. The proclivity of the IT committee chairman to speak to media first undermines the functioning of the committee members and the committee itself,” Rathore told newspersons on Thursday.
Former Information & Broadcasting Minister Rathore is also a member of the IT committee. He said he has written a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in this regard.
Rathore said the IT committee members have no issue on “summoning whosoever the committee feels needs to be summoned for the protection of the rights of citizens of our country” but added that the matter should be discussed in the panel first.
Dubey, who is also a member of the committee, has come out openly against Tharoor for his remarks and has filed breach of privilege petitions against him with the Speaker.
Dubey wrote, “Tharoor’s tenure has been controversial... Speaking in Spenserian English in foreign accent does not give one freedom to an individual to disregard parliamentary institutions”