Foreign companies must follow laws in India: Finance Ministry Advisor

Amid the ongoing spat between the Centre and microblogging platform Twitter, the Principal Economic Advisor of the Union Finance Ministry Sanjeev Sanyal on June 16 said foreign companies must follow the national laws of India and the country should not allow digital colonization. Speaking to ANI, Sanjeev Sanyal said, "Companies domestic or foreign need to follow the national laws of India and that is particularly true when we are in a situation where foreign companies begin to take sides in internal political debates. In our long history, there are many instances of foreign players interfering in Indian internal policy matters. The obvious example is that of the East India Company where that interference in internal politics led to foreign colonization." “Now it may not happen physically this time around but even digital colonization is bad enough. So I think as Indians we should leave aside our personal political preferences and take this matter seriously and not have opinions on the matter. We should not allow foreign entities to interfere with our internal debates in any way. This is a very slippery slope and it can only end badly,” he added.