NEW DELHI: Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said the government fully respects the freedom of expression and discourse on social media and interned adding that “Our government is committed towards digital inclusion.”

Welcoming the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) decision on discriminatory pricing, he said, “We very much appreciate this decision of TRAI whereby differential tariff in case of data services has been rejected. The view of our government from the beginning has been very clear, which I have also articulated in the Parliament, that is, internet is one of the finest creations of human mind and it should not become the monopoly of few.”

“Differential pricing on data, whether it is Free Basics or any other mode, is plainly not acceptable,” the minister said, adding that the internet “must be available without discrimination.”

Prasad said that the government was expanding Digital India into every “nook and corner of the country, and taking extraordinary steps to empower the people through technology, to create a knowledge economy, the very concept,” in order to bring about digital inclusion.