DoT’s committee on Net Neutrality had signaled out Internet.org as acting as a gate-keeper of information, which can cause wide spread harm to the free Internet principles.

The government had sought public comments following a controversy on zero-rated plans that are seen to be discriminatory.

One alleged email (dated August 14, 2015) from Vineeta Dixit, a member of Google’s public policy and government relations team to the IAMAI government relations committee has specifically asked for the removal of any reference to zero rating in its submission to the DoT, arguing that there was no consensus among internet companies on the issue. However, they had not mentioned Zero Rating in their report.

The received responses will be considered by the government to take a decision on the net neutrality issue along with TRAI’s suggestions following the consultation process.

When the entire nation was witnessing the storm of debate over net neutrality, where most citizens criticised the monopoly scheme, Google chose to keep mum for the entire tenure. ” Facebook has been taking a firm stand in favor of Zero Rating from the beginning while the others are flip-flopping from both sides of the fence”. ” The Internet giant had further stressed upon the idea that “no matter what choice TRAI ultimately makes with respect to the forms of technology or the structure of the agency to implement the National Broadband Plan, it must explicitly put in place safeguards to protect network neutrality in the regulatory framework for the project”. Airtel had previously tried a similar approach but had to withdraw the plan after it faced a severe backlash. Net neutrality is must for bringing equality on digital platforms.

While today is the last day to drop your voice on Net Neutrality at mygov.in, it looks like almost 72,000 comments on the website are against the zero-rated plans.

Both Google and Facebook have failed to respond these allegations of lobbying inside IAMAI.