Chief Election Commissioner of India Om Prakash Rawat has said, “Election Commission is taking sturdy steps to deal with ‘paid’ and ‘fake’ news during upcoming election in the country.”
Rawat was addressing the daylong seminar on ‘Election and Media’ at Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Mass Communication and Journalism. The seminar was held here on Tuesday.
While addressing the seminar, Rawat said that in democratic nations, worldwide are trying to influence the opinion of its people by data harvesting. Even in India when elections are near, the trend of fake and paid news will increase. Election Commission has formed a committee to deal with this issue, he added.
Taking an example from the episode of Ashwathama from Mahabharata, OP Rawat explained that the paid and fake news trend prevailed even in those times. He said to deal with this a Media Certification and Monitoring Committee is formed by Election Commission of India.
Explaining the working process of the committee, Rawat said that the social media companies have told Election Commission of India that they will not let the elections get effected. Besides, there will be no updates about elections and related news before 48 hours of election.
Rawat further said that a mock drilling of the same will be held during the upcoming elections in four States of the country. Further, this practice will also be applied during the lok Sabha elections. He also explained about article 324 of the constitution.
later, a questionnaire was also held wherein the students asked about their queries and Rawat answered them all.