Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said his Facebook account was wrongly suspended after posts on the deaths of a journalist and a woman in Ballia were flagged for “adult sexual exploitation and violence.” His account was restored on Saturday.
“I was told the objection was ‘Adult sexual exploitation and violence’. When I got the report, I saw that the flagged posts were about the murder of a journalist and a woman from Ballia,” Akhilesh Yadav told reporters.
Asserting that the suspension will not deter him, the SP chief added that his posts only raised questions about the pressure faced by journalists under the BJP government. “In the post I had written that the death of a journalist, putting pressure on them, doing FIRs on them, all of the BJP’s tricks are being used here. What was wrong in that? We will continue our work on the ground and enlighten people. That’s where the real fight is,” he said.
Centre clarifies it had ‘no role’ in suspension
Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, clarified that the Centre had “no role” in the suspension of Akhilesh Yadav’s Facebook account.
“Facebook has taken action, the government has no role in this. There was a very abusive post on his account, which is why Facebook suspended the account according to their policy. There is no role of the government here,” he told reporters on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the SP has accused the BJP of supressing the opposition’s voice. SP leaders called the suspension of Yadav’s account an “attack on democracy”.
SP spokesperson Fakhrul Hasan Chaand wrote on ‘X’, “Suspending the Facebook account of respected Akhilesh Yadav ji, the national president of the country’s third-largest party, is an attack on democracy. The BJP government has imposed an undeclared emergency, where every opposing voice is being suppressed. But the Samajwadi Party will continue to oppose the BJP’s anti-people policies.”