The parliamentary IT committee is set to send summon to Meta over its CEO Marck Zuckerburg’s recent comments on 2024 Indian elections.

In a post on X, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey said that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology would summon Meta to seek an apology from Meta over Zuckerburg’s comments.

Spreading incorrect information about any democratic country insult its image. Such an organisation would have to apologise to India’s parliament and public,” said Dubey, who chairs the committee, in a post on X in Hindi.

In a recent podcast with Joe Rogan, Zuckerburg had said that people lost trust in governments across the world during the Covid-19 pandemic and incumbents lost elections as a result. He clubbed India among the countries where he said incumbents lost elections.

“A lot of people in the US focus on this as an American phenomenon, but I kind of think that the reaction to Covid probably caused a breakdown in trust in a lot of governments around the world because I mean, you know, 2024 was a big election year around the world and, you know, there are all these countries, India, you know, just like a ton of countries that had elections and the incumbents basically lost every single one,” said Zuckerburg.

This was a misleading statement as the incumbent leader, Narendra Modi, prevailed in the 2024 elections and continues to be the prime minister.

In the 2024 Indian elections, Modi did not lose, but his party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), lost the parliamentary majority. The coalition that the BJP is part of, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), won the majority and that’s how Modi and NDA won the elections even if the BJP could not win parliamentary majority.

The leaders of the BJP have reacted harshly to Zuckerburg’s statement. Before Dubey, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in a post on X that it was “disappointing to see misinformation from Mr. Zuckerberg himself”.

In an apparent reaction to Zuckerburg’s comment about people’s trust in governments after Covid-19, Vaishnaw said, “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.”

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India’s parliamentary panel to summon Meta over Zuckerberg’s remarks on 2024 Lok Sabha election