Twitter India head of news Raheel Khursheed under fire from right-wing brigade

Update: In light of recent information, we have made changes in the story to remove reference of BJP’s involvement in the petition. We regret the error. There’s a storm brewing for Twitter India. Supporters of BJP and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi have come out in protest against the appointment of Kashmir-born Raheel Khursheed as the Head of News, Politics and Government division for Twitter in India. The group alleges that Khursheed is a strong critic of the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 elections. Khursheed, a former journalist and an online activist, will be responsible for tracking and expanding the micro-blogging website’s relations with government organisations, journalists and even politicians. With elections looming, and Twitter expected to play a major role in swaying the vote, Khursheed’s appointment has come under more scrutiny than it would have any other year. He has quite openly criticised Narendra Modi in the past for the ill-governance during the 2002 Gujarat riots. There’s also an online petition, directed at Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO, urging him to revoke the appointment. Filed by Anurag Dixit, the petition has received 2,337 signatures at the time of writing this report, with 163 signatures needed to reach its goal. Ironically, Khursheed has served as the Director of Communications at Change.org as well.“While we the petitioners have no business of questioning Mr. Khursheed’s professional qualifications but his political bias and statements in the past makes us believe that he will not be able to discharge his duties in an unbiased manner,” reads the petition. It goes on to add that Khursheed has, in the past, displayed “sheer contempt and hate” for Modi and has even gone on to call him a mass murderer. It adds that Khursheed is a Kashmiri separatist supporter. “Twitter has been successful in becoming global by being a neutral as well as open-ended platform of communication. I am afraid that this appointment will hamper that image in India,” said Arvind Gupta, the Head of the Information Technology cell at the BJP told Live Mint, while other leaders have dismissed the issue as not significant enough. Neither Khursheed, nor Rishi Jaitly, Head of Twitter India commented on this matter, but we have a feeling we haven’t seen the end of this story yet. (Image credit: YouTube)