The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology will consider written documentation provided by Facebook data-scientist-turned-whistleblower Sophie Zhang, Chairman Shashi Tharoor has said according to a report by The Telegraph.

According to the report, in an emailed statement to the paper, Tharoor said that the committee recognises the speaker’s discretion in allowing a foreign national’s testimony before it and although it would have liked to hear Zhang’s oral testimony, the committee would be going ahead with considering the written documentation Zhang has already provided over email to the committee.

On June 18th, in an interview with news agency UNI, Om Birla the Lok Sabha Speaker had stressed that it is left to the speaker’s discretion to allow or prohibit a foreign nationals from giving in-person testimony. “If someone tweets and claims that they are not being permitted by Speaker, it is not right, they should be aware of Parliamentary procedure. They should be aware of Parliamentary procedure. Speaker has to decide who to allow (to depose) or not to allow. Unless it is a very serious issue, foreigners are not supposed to be allowed to appear in front of committees,” he is quoted saying.

Zhang, who alleges that Facebook holds a pro-BJP bias, is not serious about tackling inauthentic behaviour on its platform in India, etc. had tweeted about the Lok Sabha speaker not allowing her to provide testimony to the IT Committee.

It’s been...

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