Election Commission silence on net effect questioned

Hyderabad: A Facebook user, Mr Saket Gokhale, has claimed that the social media site had removed pages linked to a ‘Congress IT cell’ for “inauthentic behaviour” due to an alleged link between Mr Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of Global Cybersecurity, and the Modi government.

Facebook also removed pages from BJP-related accounts.

Mr Gokhale alleged that Mr Gleicher was associated with a neo-conservative think tank called Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He alleged that this was closely related to weapons lobbying and to propagate interests of the US military establishment.

He alleged that the CSIS’s India division was called ‘Wadhwani Chair in US India Policy Studies’, that he charged was wholly funded by billionaire Romesh Wadhwani of Symphony Technology Group.

Mr Wadhwani’s Institute of Artificial Intelligence was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year. This he claimed established the link between the Modi government and Mr Gleicher’s organisation. “This reveals how these hit jobs are done,” he claimed.

He alleged that the Election Commission was not reacting to this attempt to influence the elections.