Social media giant Meta issued an apology on Tuesday after a selfie video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing student protesters was briefly removed from Facebook before being reinstated. Sources indicated that the brief removal was caused by a technical glitch, though government officials are taking the incident very seriously and have summoned senior Meta executives to provide a formal explanation.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the error in a statement, noting that the content had been removed in error and was subsequently restored. In response, the Ministry of Information and Technology dispatched summons to the global heads of both Meta and Instagram to address the temporary takedown.
The video, originally published shortly after midnight last Thursday, featured the Prime Minister appealing directly to students during widespread demonstrations demanding the resignation of then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET-UG examination leak. Addressing the camera directly, the Prime Minister sought to reassure young people that the administration was treating examination irregularities as a matter of top priority.
In his address, Modi acknowledged the immense distress caused to hundreds of thousands of students and their families, outlining the measures taken over the preceding ten weeks to hold those responsible accountable and ensure suspects were taken into custody. It is important to note the fact that the government’s key objective was to ensure that the students would not miss out on an academic year, with the government having used its resources in order to organise the exams for 2.2 million students who were considered NEETs without causing any delay.
It was at such a time that the late-night video address came into existence, following the rise of protests and demonstration across the country spearheaded by students under the name of Cockroach Janta Party (CJP).
Also read: CJP claims breakthrough as govt agrees to withdraw FIRs
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