Sacked teacher of Unacademy says his remark misinterpreted, alleges firm acted under social media pressure

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

sacked teacher Karan Sangwan on Saturday alleged that the firm terminated his service under pressure from trollers on social media who misinterpreted his generic remark to vote for educated candidates. In a video on his YouTube channel, Sangwan said he made the generic remark on his YouTube channel and not during his lecture at Unacademy. «Why did termination happen? There is a pressure which gets built and you burst under its load.

You (Unacademy) could not deal with the pressure. Therefore, under pressure you had to take an action which you may have not desired to or you desired to...I don't know. I can't say anything about what your intentions were?» Sangwan said.

Sangwan said that Unacademy acted against him without hearing him out. «You directly sent me a termination notice,» Sangwan said, adding that to hide the pressure, Unacademy used the term «code of conduct» without defining a political statement. He said that Unacademy cited views expressed by a Twitter account as an example in the termination notice.

«Someone else's views were imposed on me,» Sangwan said. Sangwan said that he was hurled abuses, called anti-national and death threats were issued to him by trollers «who appeared to be illiterate» after his video was spread on August 13. Unacademy co-founder Roman Saini said that Sangwan was in breach of contract and therefore the company had to part ways with him.

Saini in a tweet on the matter said Unacademy is an education platform that is deeply committed to imparting quality education. «To do this we have in place a strict Code of Conduct for all our educators with the intention of ensuring that our learners have access to unbiased knowledge. Our learners are at the centre of everything we do.