After Arshdeep Singh episode, Sanjeev Sanyal, others complain of 'malicious' edits to their Wiki pages

Days after miscreants tampered with cricketer Arshdeep Singh's Wikipedia page to incite communal discord, Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, and historian Vikram Sampath also complained that their Wikipedia pages were compromised and updated with incorrect information.

Taking cognisance of these complaints, Minister of State in MeitY Rajeev Chandrasekhar warned Wikipedia to remain consistent with the country's goal of 'Safe and Trusted India' in order to remain as an intermediary in India.

In a tweet, Chandrasekhar said, “This is not a tenable or permissible situation @Wikipedia as an intermediary. If a platform wishes to remain an intermediary or be available in India, they must be consistent with #SafeAndTrustedInternet goals of India.”

After India lost to Pakistan in an Asia Cup match played recently, the Wikipedia page of fast bowler Arshdeep Singh was edited to add the term 'khalistani'. The incident was reported at a time the cricketer was being heavily trolled and criticised for dropping a crucial catch.

After the incident came to light, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology sent a notice to Wikipedia, following which Singh's page was given additional safeguards to ensure only trusted users could edit it.

However, it has now been learnt that Wikipedia pages are still being tampered with and economist Sanyal has claimed that his Wikipedia content was being ‘messed with’ by a ‘well-oiled, closed ring’.

A look at his Wikipedia page revision history reveals that two edits were done on September 5 by an unidentified person with the IP address 49.36.178.54. Those edits were undone by a registered Wikipedia volunteer later.

Speaking about the harrowing experience, Sanyal told Moneycontrol: “Wikipedia is now a public utility. And there is no reason why those who make edits cannot do this in their own name. Why does this require anonymity when this allows for random vandalisation?”

Meanwhile, historian Vikram Sampath has taken to Twitter to complain about the pages being ‘hijacked by vested and ideological interests’.

“Several of us @sanjeevsanyal, @aRanganathan72 have been victims of their malicious misinformation campaigns,” he tweeted.

Moneycontrol has also reached out to Wikipedia with queries in this regard, and the article will be updated when a response is received. The publication has also reached out to Sampath and Ranganathan.

Earlier, Wikipedia had told Moneycontrol in a statement that the volunteer-led platform has over 60,000 volunteers in India, and that it does not set any editorial policy for Wikipedia. Wikipedia's editorial policy is determined by the global volunteers who, over the years have created various policies and guidelines to determine what content should be included on Wikipedia, the foundation said.

"Vandalism does occur on Wikipedia from time to time, as can occur in any open, online platform... The majority of vandalism on Wikipedia is reverted by bots or editors within minutes, as was done in this recent case," it added.