The Election Commission plans to implement a slew of measures to curb the circulation of fake news on social media and paid news in the run-up to elections.
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) O P Rawat on Saturday said that effective use of media and curbing use of fake news and paid news were important areas on which the poll body has been working upon. He also advised media to look at some best practices in international media that have started bringing out a regular column — what was fake last week — on the internet, in the media and 'fact checker reports'.
Rawat, speaking on 'challenges to India electoral democracy' at a symposium, said the present set of laws are "inadequate" to tackle the menace of black money in elections, and noted that Cambridge Analytica like "machinations" of data theft, data harvesting and fake news pose a potent threat to the electoral process in the country.
The CEC said democracy does not run on whims and it requires traits such as courage, character, integrity and knowledge that are diminishing and are on the "verge of extinction" in the country.
Rawat underlining a number of issues and challenges that face the electoral body, said clean elections are like a "well spring of legitimacy" for the leadership and the
people of the country and if this was contaminated by such issues, the common man becomes "cynical" about the entire system, which is an area of concern.
"With the rise of fake news, with the rise of make believe things, with the rise of all kind of machinations like data theft, data harvesting, profiling, targeted communication affecting not only communication but referendum world over and changing the outcome of any process which is meant to translate popular will in (taking) a healthy decision, in (choosing) a healthy representative Government. That's the potent threat every democracy in the world is facing," Rawat said at the event organised by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi.
The CEC said the EC was well aware of these issues amongst many others similar to them. "Here in our country, the Commission is seized of issues such as cyber security, securing our data so that Cambridge Analytica kind of things do not happen over elections, about misuse and abuse of social media platforms, about fake news, about all kinds of ills that get into whether it is management of electoral rolls, campaign finance, polling process and technology," he said. He said he was surprised to see during Karnataka election, in Bengaluru, the polling percentage was lowest.
"We investigated and we found that because of IT (information and technology) industry, job hopping was taking place and this (incorrect electoral rolls) was happening. Names were there but people are not there, that is why polling was just 52-54 per cent," the CEC said.