E-Paper
Wikipedia execs likely to be summoned over vandalisation of Arshdeep Singh’s page
Officials familiar with the matter said the government is taking the issue very seriously and may also issue a show cause notice
The electronics and information technology ministry plans to summon Wikipedia executives to explain how cricketer Arshdeep Singh’s page was edited to reflect “Khalistan associations”, why this happened, and what the crowd-sourced digital encyclopaedia plans to do to plug the gaps that led to it.
Officials familiar with the matter said the government is taking the issue very seriously and may also issue a show cause notice. HT reached out to Wikipedia for comments but did not receive a response immediately.
Singh faced trolling online after India’s loss to Pakistan in an Asia Cup game on Sunday night. His Wikipedia page was edited to claim he was associated with the separatist Khalistani movement.
The edit history of Singh’s Wikipedia page showed an unregistered user replaced the words “India” with “Khalistan” in Singh’s profile. An anonymous Wikipedia editor undid the changes around 15 minutes later.
Wikipedia is a collaborative database and anyone can add or alter content on it. Anyone is allowed to make or suggest edits, but Wikipedia follows a strict logging mechanism.
In November 2020, the government issued a notice to Wikipedia under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act for violating the country’s territorial integrity and asked it to take down a page for wrongly depicting India’s map by depicting Aksai Chin as part of China.
Wikipedia fixed the page and said that it was a volunteer-based organisation and hence anyone could make the changes.
