Netizens dislike Kapil Sibal’s comments

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When Union Information Minister Kapil Sibal came up with a proposal to regulate content posted on social networking sites, he probably never imagined that he would become the target of abusive comments the next day.

The Indian online community poured cold water on the minister’s proposal, deriding it as a move to curb freedom of speech in the world’s largest democracy. The phrase #IdiotKapilSibal was one of India’s most tweeted on Tuesday.

The day before, the IT Minister had announced that the government intended to impose stringent guidelines to regulate content on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo.

The purpose, he said, was to remove offensive and scurrilous content from the net. He also said a penalty would be imposed if ‘objectionable’ content was not removed immediately after a complaint.
The backlash came quickly. Indian netizens unleashed their fury on the minister, calling his suggestion all kinds of names, including ‘foolish’.

Noted personalities including Taslima Nasreen and Pritish Nandy came out strongly against the idea of such censorship.

Taslima said: Minister of the world’s largest democracy is in favor of Internet Censorship. But there’s no democracy without free speech. Nandy tweeted: Kapil Sibal is making the same mistake Siddhartha Shankar Ray did to provoke the Emergency. Another Mrs G paid the price for it.

A New York Times report on Monday mentioned that Sibal called executives about six weeks ago and showed them a Facebook page that maligned ruling Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi and told them it was “unacceptable”.

A tweet from Shobhaa De : Sibalsaab, such outrage 2 protect privacy of one ‘Madam’ in a country of 100 million internet users? We like our freedom and we shall have it!

If Sibal is wise, he’ll be advised to leave the Twitterati and Facebook-ophiles alone!