In order to curtail the misuse of bulk sale of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) during the coming elections, the Delhi Chief Electorate officer (CEO) has decided to seek the help of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Delhi Police.
This is being done also to check the candidates of various political parties in sending unsolicited messages to the voters.
It may be interesting to mention here that all the district election officers have already announced rates of SMS packs to be used by the candidates and the same has to be declared in their final poll expenditure. In a meeting held last week at the Delhi Chief Electorate office, an issue had erupted that the sale of SIM cards rises during election time. The Delhi Chief Electorate officer will now also approach the various mobile operators in the Capital and NCR region and ask them to sell the SIM cards to customers as per proper norms issued by the Government.
The mobile companies should verify the residence and other details, including valid identity proof.
Also, a record of all the expenditures done during and before the elections should be maintained to check if any of the SIM cards are used for illegal purposes or for election related work. A senior official from the Election Commission of India (ECI) also stated that a few days back, they had received complaints from youths alleging that they had received messages related to poll campaigning on their mobile phones. The ECI will has received this complaint and would be looking into the matter. Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Dev told The Pioneer that the Election Commission has directed telecom companies to upgrade their system and not issue sim cards without proper verification and identification.
Dev further stated that if somebody complains about sms related to poll campaigning, the election office will verify and examine the content and add it on poll expenditure of the candidate or political parties.
“If a candidate has accounts on telephone number, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, even Apps, then the email id and the account information need to be intimated to the Election Commission of India,” Dev added. “The candidates are required to file affidavits in Form-26 at the time of filing of nominations containing all details related to social media, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, e-mail id, mobile number,” he said.