Sacked teacher of Unacademy alleges firm acted under social media pressure

NEW DELHI: Unacademy 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.

As you all know I have been fired from Unacademy for just doing my job. I didn't breach any code of conduct as mentioned by Unacademy but still I did pay a price for speaking the truth to power.

I will not back down, Jai Hind ?? pic.twitter.com/YNOzs2CrwE

— Karan Sangwan ❁ (@ZackRhea) August 18, 2023

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. 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.

Sangwan said the situation changed in his favour after he shared information about his termination on August 17 in a messaging group that was leaked on social media and this time lakhs of people supported him. Several politicians questioned the action of Unacademy and if his appeal to vote for an educated candidate was wrong.

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.