The social media conglomerate Facebook on Monday said that they enforce policies globally without regard to ‘anyone’s political position’. This comes a day after a slugfest between  the Congress and the BJP over a Wall Street Journal report, which said that the social media giant ignored applying its hate speech rules to politicians of the ruling party in India.

“We prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence and we enforce these policies globally without regard to anyone’s political position/party affiliation. We’re making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits of our process to ensure fairness and accuracy,” a Facebook spokesperson said, according to news agency ANI.

India is one of the fastest-growing markets globally for Facebook with over 340 million users. In the report published on Friday, the US newspaper cited interviews with unnamed Facebook insiders to claim that one of its senior India policy executives intervened in internal communication to stop a permanent ban on a BJP MLA from Telangana after he allegedly made communally charged posts.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday accused the BJP and RSS of spreading ‘fake news’ using Facebook and WhatsApp to influence the electorate, eliciting a sharp retort from Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad who reminded the opposition party of the Cambridge Analytica issue.

Prasad’s reference to Cambridge Analytica was about the allegations the Congress faced in 2018 that the UK-based firm offered the party data mining of Facebook posts to influencing voters in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Congress had rejected the charges

Commenting on the WSJ report former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, “BJP & RSS control Facebook & Whatsapp in India. They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate. Finally, the American media has come out with the truth about Facebook,” Gandhi said.

Prasad quickly hit back saying, “Losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP & RSS. You were caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica & Facebook to weaponise data before the elections & now have the gall to question us?” Prasad posted on Twitter.

The Congress also demanded a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) into the charges mentioned in the report, saying they threaten the foundation of Indian democracy and need to be investigated.

“The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology would certainly wish to hear from @Facebook about these reports and what they propose to do about hate-speech in India,” said Congress lawmaker from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor, who heads the committee.