Government had "no role" in it: IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Akhilesh Yadav's Facebook account suspension

The Centre on Saturday clarified that it had "no role" in the suspension of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's Facebook account.

Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the suspension was the action of Facebook itself and the government has no role in it.

Vaishnaw said, "Action was taken by Facebook and not the government. There was an abusive post on his profile and Facebook took action according to their policies. Government has no role in it."


However, later in the day, the SP chief's account was restored.

Earlier in the day, Akhilesh Yadav questioned the suspension of his Facebook account, alleging that his posts regarding the death of a journalist and another on the suspicious death of a woman in Ballia were incorrectly flagged as "Adult Sexual Exploitation and Violence".

"I got to know later on that my account has been suspended because there were some objections. I was told that the objection was 'Adult Sexual Exploitation and Violence'. When I got the entire report, there were posts regarding a woman from Ballia, and there were posts regarding the murder of a journalist," Akhilesh told the media.

Claiming that he was highlighting the pressure put on journalists by the BJP, Akhilesh Yadav said, "In the post I had written, that the death of a journalist, putting pressure on them...doing FIRs on them and putting undue pressure on them, all of the BJP's tricks are being used here."

Questioning his account suspension, he reaffirmed his commitment to working on the ground and engaging with people in person to empower them, rather than solely relying on social media.

"What was wrong with this? But we have understood that the more we work on the ground, our fight will become successful and that is why we will work on the ground itself, and do the work of enlightening the people", he said.