by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, News, Politics, Social Media, Technology
New Delhi : The Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT on Thursday told the government to make Facebook commit that it would not misuse the users data to influence elections in India or for any other extraneous purposes outside the purview of the local laws or terms of user agreement.
The panel headed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Anurag Thakur told the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to take a pledge in writing from Facebook that it would not “misuse” the data “politically or otherwise”, sources said.
Earlier, Thakur said in a tweet that the panel met on Thursday to examine the issue of citizens’ data security and online privacy, and also heard the views of MeitY officials in this connection.
“This is an important issue and we will hold further meetings. The citizens may email their views on the matter to the Standing Committee,” he said.
According to sources, the panel also expressed concern at the lack of IT regulatory framework in the country.
The Standing Committee’s observation came after last month it came to light that British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the data of around 50 million Facebook users to influence elections in many countries, including the US presidential elections of 2016.
The Indian government has issued a notice to Facebook over suspected data breach of Indian citizens and also sought details of the measures the social media giant had put in place to ensure the safety and prevention of misuse of personal data of the users.
Facebook has admitted that nearly 5.62 lakh users in India were “potentially affected” by the breach.
Assembly elections are due this year in several crucial states in the country including Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Polling is scheduled in Karnataka on May 12.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amitava Mukherjee
Roughly 32,000 new voters enrolled in each constituency for this year’s assembly election in Bihar may play a decisive role in determining the ultimate poll result. The presence of these new voters becomes important in the light of the fact that during the last two assembly elections in the state, the victory margins of many of the winning candidates ranged between 12,000 and 13,000 votes.
But there are plenty of ifs and buts before the state goes to the polls. The electoral behaviour of the Hindi-speaking states in the Indo-Gangetic plain is always influenced by caste factors and here, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav, a former chief minister and one of the principal players of caste-based politics in India, have stolen a march by stitching up an alliance and announcing their respective share of seats. There is reason for the Bharatiya Janatta Party (BJP) to feel a bit rattled as it cannot field an equally powerful counter-combination of castes and, therefore, has fallen back on its slogan of “development” as can be understood from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of a grant of Rs.1.25 lakh crore for Bihar.
But this slogan of “development”, together with a sense of “national perspective”, as described by the BJP, had enabled the constituents of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) it leads to capture 31 seats out of 40 in Bihar during the 2014 parliamentary elections. The NDA’s combined vote-share was 38.8 percent while the BJP’s individual share in this stood at 29.86 percent. However, the vote share of the opposition parties consisting of the Janata Dal-United (JD-U), the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) combined was much more than that of the NDA. This is the source of worry for the BJP.
The BJP’s traditional vote-base consists of the Brahmins and the Baniyas of Indian society. Party veteran L.K. Advani first tried to broadbase it by his concept of a broader Hindutva. The BJP could successfully romp home in the last Lok Sabha elections in spite of its divorce from Nitish Kumar, who represented the other backward class (OBC) interests. This was because a significant number of OBC votes and even a slight amount of Muslim votes had swung towards the BJP. But this is unlikely to happen now.
This time, the BJP can safely count on 14 percent upper-caste votes, six percent Vaishya votes, around six percent votes that are likely to go to the Lok Janshakti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan and four percent votes of the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party of Upendra Kushwaha. Former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, hailing from the Musahar caste and representing the interests of the ‘mahadalits’, can bring in another five to six percent votes. But this may not be enough for the BJP to secure a convincing victory.
Against this backdrop, the new voters have become important for the BJP as they may not have been bitten by the caste bug. But the BJP’s greatest worry should come from the Muslims, who constitute nearly 15 percent of the voters. For a long time since the 1990s, the RJD garnered most of their votes. Latest indications, however, are that they are again switching their loyalty to the Congress.
This will certainly give the JD-U-RJD-Congress combine extra advantage. In the 2014 parliamentary polls these parties together had received 45.6 percent votes. But for tilting the scales in their favour, both the combines are expected to rely heavily on the extremely backward castes (EBCs) who constitute nearly 24 percent of the Bihar populace. In 2014, 53 percent of this group had voted for the BJP. How they would cast their votes this time has become an important question.
In all probability, the JD-U will be able to retain its 16.4 percent vote base. The Congress is also expected to maintain its 8.56 percent share. About the RJD, however, there are some reasonable doubts. In 2014 it had received 20.46 percent votes. But this time there are two spoilsports – the Garib Janata Dal (Secular) of Sadhu Yadav and the Jana Adhikar Mancha of Pappu Yadav. Both are likely to cut into the RJD vote-share in some pockets. At the same time they have, till now, declared their support for Jitan Ram Manjhi – which may harm the JD-U a bit.
On the whole, the Bihar election result is likely to be a cliff-hanger – and the real test for Narendra Modi.
(Amitava Mukherjee is a senior journalist and commentator. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at amukherjee57@yahoo.com)
