Amazon refuses to appear as Facebook, Google Pay, Twitter and Paytm are summoned by Indian parliamentary commitee on issues of data privacy

• A joint committee of the Indian Parliament has summoned Amazon, Facebook, Google Pay, Twitter and homegrown payments platform Paytm to discuss issues of data protection and privacy.
• Amazon has declined the invitation citing that they don't have anyone qualified enough to attend such proceedings right now.
• This has irked the head of the joint committee, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member Meenakshi Lekhi, who asserts that Amazon's refusal could lead to the government taking coercive action against the e-commerce giant.

The e-commerce giant owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos’, Amazon, has refused to appear before a joint committee of the Parliament that is looking into the Personal Data Protection Bill. Facebook, Twitter, Google and local payments platform, Paytm, have also been asked to appear.

It has asked these platforms to present the committee with ‘oral evidence’ on issues of data protection and privacy. The summons to Twitter, in particular, comes a day after the Indian IT Secretary xx Swahey wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey over geo-tagging Leh as a part of China.

Facebook was also under the scanner as recently last month when the Washington Post revealed that social networking sites may have been colluding with the current Indian leadership to not censor content that should have possibly been removed as per the company’s own guidelines.

The joint committee led by BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi consists of 20 members from the lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, and 10 from the upper house, Rajya Sabha.

Amazon irks head of joint committee

Amazon’s refusal to participate in the process has irked the head of the join committee, Meenakshi Lekhi. "Amazon has written to us and said they don't have anyone qualified enough right now to attend. However, the committee has taken a very serious view of it and unanimously decided to resend a notice making it abundantly clear that if they fail to show up, coercive actions may follow," she told IANS.

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