INDIA’S communists have called for an urgent inquiry into “the nexus between Facebook-WhatsApp-Instagram and the BJP” following explosive revelations of social media bias in the country.

A Wall Street Journal investigation alleges that Facebook’s top policy executive in India Ankhi Das warned staff not to apply hate-speech rules to politicians of the ruling party. The WhatsApp and Instagram apps are owned by the social media giant.

The exposé raises “questions about the huge social media investment and operations of the BJP and its role in promoting hate between communities,” the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said.

It follows accusations by Congress Party politician Rahul Gandhi that the BJP has used Facebook to “spread fake news and hatred.” 

The US paper reported that Mr Das told staff that “punishing members of India’s ruling party would damage the company’s business prospects with the country.” 

He is said to have opposed applying the hate speech rules to politicians including Tiger Raja Singh, a BJP politician from Hyderabad who has called on Facebook for Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to be shot, referred to Indian Muslims as “traitors” and called for mosques to be razed.

Anant Kumar Hegde, BJP MP for Uttara Kannada, who claimed on Facebook that Muslims were spreading coronavirus across India in a conspiracy called “corona jihad,” was another named beneficiary of Mr Das’s intervention against Facebook’s own hate speech policy.

The CPI-M said that “the huge financial resources at the disposal of the BJP, aided further by the opaque electoral bonds scheme, completely ensures its control over social media.” 

The electoral bonds scheme, a reform to political finances imposed by the BJP government in 2017, was supposed to increase transparency by channelling donations through the State Bank of India, but critics say it has done the opposite, since donors and recipients are under no obligation to declare donations and a previous cap on corporate donations was abolished at the same time.

The accusations will increase fears over the political clout of privately owned social media corporations. Facebook has previously faced criticism for blocking the page of former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, which had 1.6 million followers, in an act of political censorship, while thousands of fake Twitter accounts were reportedly deployed in the run-up to the military coup in Bolivia last November.

The Hindu chauvinist BJP has long been accused of spreading fake news. During disastrous floods in Kerala in 2018, websites linked to it promoted photos of members of its paramilitary wing the RSS claiming they were undertaking relief works, when the images actually dated from 2012 and were from Gujarat. The army also disavowed a video by a man dressed as a soldier who claimed the military were being prevented from assisting flood victims by the state’s Communist-led government.