New Delhi
Days after the Lok Sabha Speaker asked the parliamentary panels to not take up subjudice matters in their meetings, a house committee on information technology has dropped the issue of internet services suspension in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir from its agenda.
As per the updated agenda issued by the Secretariat of Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian Parliament, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology, headed by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, will discuss suspension of telecom or internet services in Bihar and Delhi in its meeting scheduled for September 1. An earlier agenda had included IIOJK too. However, the panel’s meeting where Facebook has been summoned remains on the agenda.
Tharoor has been under attack from BJP members of the panel for taking up internet suspension in IIOJK and calling up Facebook India executives, following a Wall Street Journal report that claimed that the social media giant refused to apply hate speech rules to certain ruling party politicians. BJP MP Nishikant Dubey had also written a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla requesting him to remove Tharoor from the post and appoint any other member chairman of the committee.
The agenda of both these meetings was also the bone of contention between BJP MPs and members from opposition parties in the parliamentary panel.
Dubey was vehemently opposing taking up of suspension of internet services in Jammu and Kashmir, saying that it is subjudice.—KMS
