Amazon’s refusal to appear before Parliament panel is breach of privilege, says BJP MP Lekhi

A Joint Committee of Parliament, headed by Meenakshi Lekhi, summoned Facebook, Twitter, and Google while looking into the Data Protection Bill.

Employees at reception area at the Amazon Inc. campus in Hyderabad, India | Representational image | Dhiraj Singh | Bloomberg

New Delhi: E-commerce giant Amazon has refused to appear before the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Data Protection Bill on October 28 and this amounts to breach of privilege, panel chairperson and BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi said on Friday.

Lekhi said that “the panel is unanimous in its opinion that coercive action can be suggested to the government against the e-commerce company”.

“Amazon has refused to appear before the panel on October 28 and if no one on behalf of the e-commerce company appears before the panel it amounts to breach of privilege,” she told PTI.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s policy head Ankhi Das appeared before the panel on the issue of data security on Friday.

Facebook India representatives were asked some tough and searching questions by the members of the panel, sources said.

During the meeting, a member suggested that the social media giant should not draw inferences from the data of its users for commercial benefits of its advertisers.

The panel has summoned officials of micro-blogging site Twitter on October 28, and Google and Paytm on October 29.