New Delhi: Priyanka Chaturvedi, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader, lashed out at e-learning platform Unacademy for firing a tutor after he asked students to vote for "educated candidates". Karan Sangwan was sacked after the video of one of his classes went viral. The clip, where he urges students to only vote for educated candidates has created a big controversy on social media.
Unacademy co-founder Roman Saini said the teacher was fired for breaching the company's code of conduct as the classroom was "not a place to share personal opinions."
Priyanka Chaturvedi hit out at the platform saying that asking people to vote for literate politicians wasn't a biased opinion.
"How does saying vote for literate politicians a biased opinion? Doesn't that opinion positively influence young minds? Shame if merely expressing this view gets you to take someone's job, Unacademy," she tweeted.
"Don't understand why everyone felt Karan Sangwan, the professor's opinion on educated leaders was about Mr. Supreme. Repeat of Kajol level trolling, but here it cost him his job," the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader added.
The termination has been criticised on social media with thousands of users claiming to have uninstalled the Unacademy app with #UninstallUnacademy also trending on X.
The move was also criticised by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who questioned the reasoning behind Unacademy's decision. "Is it a crime to appeal to educated people to vote? If someone is illiterate, personally I respect him. But people's representatives cannot be illiterate. This is the era of science and technology. Illiterate public representatives can never build the modern India of the 21st century," he said.
After Unacademy sacked him, Mr Sangwan started his own YouTube channel and announced that he will post details about the controversy today.