Election Remark
Parliamentary panel to summon Meta over Zuckerberg's remark on India polls
This story was originally published at 19:01 IST on 14 January 2025
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NEW DELHI – The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology is set to summon social media giant Meta Platforms, Inc. over remarks made by its founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg on the 2024 general elections in India, the committee's chairman and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nishikant Dubey said on Tuesday.
"My committee will summon Meta for this wrong information. Wrong information in any democratic country tarnishes the image of the country. That organisation (Meta) will have to apologise to the Indian Parliament and the people here for this mistake," Dubey said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Zuckerberg had said that several incumbent governments, including the BJP government in India, lost elections in 2024 as people lost trust in governments post the COVID-19 pandemic. He made the remark on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience on Friday.
"...I kind of think that the reaction to COVID probably caused a breakdown in trust in a lot of governments around the world. I mean 2024 was a big election year around the world and all these countries, India, just like a ton of countries that had elections and the incumbents basically lost every single one," he said.
"There is some sort of global phenomenon where, whether it was because of inflation, because of the economic policies to deal with COVID or just how the governments dealt with COVID, it seems to have had this effect that is global, not just the US, but like a very broad decrease in trust, at least in that set of incumbents and maybe in sort of these democratic institutions overall," Zuckerberg had said.
Information and Broadcasting, and Electronics & Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw countered Zuckerberg's statement on Monday, stating that the people of India had reaffirmed their trust in the National Democratic Alliance. "Mr. Zuckerberg's claim that most incumbent governments, including India in 2024 elections, lost post-COVID is factually incorrect. People of India reaffirmed their trust in NDA led by PM Narendra Modi Ji's leadership. ...it's disappointing to see misinformation from Mr. Zuckerberg himself. Let's uphold facts and credibility," Vaishnaw said on X.
In the 2024 General Election, the BJP suffered a setback and won 240 seats, 32 short of the majority mark in the Lok Sabha. The party had won 303 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 282 seats in the 2014 polls.
However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took oath for the third consecutive term, as the NDA secured a comfortable majority by winning 293 seats. End
Reported by Kuldeep Singh
Edited by Avishek Dutta
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