People must have right to object: Pilot

Davos: Amid raging debate over restricting content on social networking sites, Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot has said it is the right of people, institutions, groups or any entity to object if something is hurting their sentiments. “If they believe something is hurting their sentiments, to put something which is blatantly objectionable, I think they must have the right to seek legal recourse where they can have the issues addressed,” Pilot said.[caption id=“attachment_196746” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, Sachin Pilot. Image courtesy PIB”]  [/caption] In an interview to television channel NDTV Profit on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, he said that government is of the view that people should be encouraged to raise their voices through social media. “The companies, I think, are also overreacting to a point. There is no issue if there is certain law in our country and to abide by it,” Pilot said. He dismissed charges that government is asking companies to censor all the content on the web. The minister clarified that no one has asked companies to censor everything that is uploaded or every single upload that goes on Internet. “First of all what we have to do is stop using word like banning, censorship, life without Facebook, life without Google…that is clearly exaggerating things to a point that becomes absurd,” he noted. “But if something appears somewhere, that is, in very close definition of our new law, is flouting that law and someone objects to it, then every everyone has the right to object to the thing they don’t agree with,” Pilot said. PTI