new delhi: A day before Facebook India chief Ajit Mohan's date of appearance in front of the Delhi Assembly's Peace and Harmony Committee, the top social media executive on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court against the Assembly panel's notice to him, which happened to be the second such summons after Mohan refused to appear for the first one.
Since an article in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook's hate-speech regulation rules are not as strictly enforced for members of the ruling dispensation, the Assembly panel headed by AAP MLA Raghav Chadha and the social media company have been at loggerheads with each other.
A Facebook official had written to the Assembly panel after the first summons that Mohan could not appear before it because a similar matter was pending before a parliamentary standing committee and argued that content regulation is not under the Assembly's jurisdiction.
However, the peace and harmony committee has said that it is looking into the role of the company in the north-east Delhi riots in February and that that was completely under its ambit to look into. Since then, the panel had issued a second and "final notice" to Mohan asking him to appear before them on Wednesday (today).
Now that Mohan has approached the top court against the summons, a three-judge bench headed by Justice SK Kaul will be hearing the matter today.
While issuing the second notice to the Facebook India executive, the committee had warned that if Mohan were to dishonour this summons, the panel would initiate breach of privilege proceedings against the company.
Furthermore, the peace and harmony committee has said that they have reviewed more materials in terms of statements from expert witnesses and come to the conclusion that the social media company must be probed for its purported role in allowing hate-speech before and during the riots.
The deadly riots in February took at least 53 lives, of which over 40 were Muslims and scores of others were injured, leading to a loss of homes, shops and livelihoods.