The Vice President and Managing Director of Facebook, Ajit Mohan told the Supreme Court that when the representatives of the company are called by the Information Technology Ministry they will come and record their statements.
He said this at a hearing in the top court in relation to the summons that the Delhi Governments Peace and Harmony Committee issued with regard to the north-east Delhi riots.
The former Solicitor General and the Senior Supreme Court lawyer Harish Salve appearing for Facebook’s Ajit Mohan told the bench that they will appear when the IT department calls them, they have appeared before the parliamentary committee also. The Apex court was headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul comprising of Justice Aniruddha Bose and Krishna Murari.
The Peace and Harmony Committee of the Delhi Government can only summon those who are a party said Salve. He also says he may have strong opinions that he does not want to express at this point.
The bench scheduled the matter for further hearing to Wednesday, January 27th.
The petitioners had moved to the apex court challenging the summons issued by the NCT of Delhi, Legislative Assembly, and others on September 10th and 18th on grounds that they violated Article 19(1)(a) and Article 21 guaranteed in the Constitution of India.
The petitioners had approached the Supreme court in order to quash the summons against them issued by the Legislative Assembly and the NCT of Delhi.
The Peace and Harmony Committee had issued a fresh notice to the Vice President and the Managing Director of Facebook, Ajit Mohan to appear before the committee within September 23rd. This was in relation to the alleged “intentional omission and deliberate inaction on the part of the social media platform” in accordance to hate speeches.
Ajit Mohan had told the Supreme Court yesterday that the summons issued by the Peace and Harmony committee of the Delhi legislative assembly, which is probing the Delhi riots of Feb 2020 is politically motivated.
Through the Senior Advocate, Harish Salve had claimed that the summons was based on the reports of the Wall Street Journal with an assumption that Facebook favours the ruling Government.
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