Days after ed-tech major Unacademy issued a clarification justifying its action against sacked teacher Karan Sangwan, the ex-employee has alleged that the firm acted under pressure of trolling on social media, after a video of him appealing to vote for educated candidates stirred controversy. Sangwan said that his remark in the video has been misinterpreted.
He said that the remark was made on his YouTube channel and not during his lecture at Unacademy, which was pointed out as a cause of termination in the statement released by one of the co-founders, Roman Saini, on the company’s behalf.
“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 in a YouTube video uploaded on his channel on Saturday.
He also added that the company acted against him without giving him the chance to present his case. “You directly sent me a termination notice,” Sangwan said. Furthermore, Sangwan alleged that Unacademy used the term “code of conduct” as a facade to hide the preassure and did not define the alleged political statement made by him in the video, as pointed in the official 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 Saini said that Sangwan was in breach of contract and therefore the company had to part ways with him. “Our learners are at the centre of everything we do. The classroom is not a place to share personal opinions and views as they can wrongly influence them. In the current situation, we were forced to part ways with Karan Sangwan as he was in breach of the Code of Conduct,” Saini had said on August 17.
Meanwhile, the situation appears to have changed in Sangwan’s favour after he shared information about his termination on August 17 in a messaging group that was leaked on social media, garnering support from lakhs of people including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other prominent politicians.
Sangwan said that he made a generic statement without naming anyone on his YouTube channel which was not mentioned by Unacademy. He said that people supported him after information about his termination went out but still no one from Unacademy contacted him.
“I made a statement. You are taking it on yourself when I have not taken any name. Why are you taking it on yourself? I have not said it,” he said. He also criticised the conduct of a news channel, without naming the entity, that his interview was edited to further fan the controversy.
With inputs from PTI