Political parties and candidates would have to take prior permission from the Election Commission of India (ECI) for putting advertisements on social networking sites which include Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Apps and Wikipedia for the upcoming lok Sabha elections.
Taking a strong note of political parties using social networking sites for electoral campaigning, the ECI has directed that no political advertisement should be accepted and displayed on the Internet and Internet-based media without pre-certification.
In a letter to Internet & Mobile Association of India, the ECI directed them to ensure that the content displayed by them during the electoral process was not “unlawful or malicious or violative of the Model Code of Conduct”. They would have to verify whether political parties and candidates have permission or not before uploading content. In case of any unlawful content coming to the notice of the election machinery and brought to the attention of Internet-based media, the same would be removed forthwith.
The ECI has also asked the social networking sites to maintain records of expenditure incurred by political parties and individual candidates on advertisements so that the records can be produced when requested by the commission.
Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Dev stated that the EC would try its best to prevent candidates and political parties from “misusing” the social media but at the same time maintained that it was not attempting to “throttle” the social media.
He admitted that monitoring contents on the social media was an uphill task but asserted that every effort would be made to maintain decorum in the campaign and ensure a level playing field for all candidates. He said as servers of major social networking sites were in foreign countries, it was difficult to track the origin of the contents. He said the commission had received two complaints regarding use of social media in Assembly polls in December last year.
The commission has already issued directions for providing details of social media accounts by the candidates while filing their nominations. “It was mandatory for political parties and individual candidates to keep details of expenditure incurred on advertisement in social media.
The expenses will be accounted for in the total expenditure incurred by the candidates,” he said.
In an earlier directive, the commission had said legal provisions relating to election campaigning apply to social media in the same manner in which they apply to any other form of election campaigning using any other media. Dev said expenses on social media by candidates political and parties will be monitored by the commission and appropriate action would be taken against violators as per law.