No proposal to control social media: Govt in Rajya Sabha

There is no proposal to control social media, the government said on Monday in Rajya Sabha when asked if it was planning to do so.

In a written reply, minister of state for information and broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said, “There is no proposal in the ministry to control social media. However, the ministry proposes to set up a social media hub to facilitate information flow regarding its policies and programmes through social media platforms i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube etc.”

His response came to a question on whether the government is planning to control social media, as it was posing a serious threat to the society. “There is no proposal to invade an individual’s right to privacy,” Rathore said.

The minister’s reply in Rajya Sabha comes days after the Supreme Court asked the government whether its move to create a social media hub was to tap people’s WhatsApp messages, observing that it will be like creating a “surveillance state”.

In May this year, the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), a Public Sector Undertaking under the ministry, had floated a tender to supply a software for the project.