Taxi aggregator Ola on Friday evening (24 January) issued a statement urging everyone using its platform to respect difference of opinion, after a passenger reported a driver who held pro-Modi views.

As reported earlier, a management consultant named Kanav Sharma got into a heated debate with his Ola driver after the latter defended the Narendra Modi led central government over the topic of economic slowdown.

“The depth to which BJP’s propaganda and fake news has reached, it is getting really scary”, said Sharma in one of his tweets.

He in the end tagged Ola to ensure that drives stick to their duty and not paint their passengers “anti-nationals” and also breached the driver’s privacy by sharing his license number plate.

This behaviour by the management consultant irked many social media users who implied that he wanted to get the poor driver fired while both the parties were willingly indulging in a debate.

Ola too earned their ire after tweeting that it reported the driver for “corrective action”, leading many to warn that they would boycott the app if any action got taken against the driver.

Following the outrage, Ola has now issued a statement clarifying that none of the parties have been penalised that it encourages healthy exchange of thoughts. It also urged everyone to respect difference of opinions at all times.