The poll campaigns through social media platforms have been brought under the purview of Model Code of Conduct with political parties and candidates will have to provide details of such campaigns, the Election Commission has said.
The Commission has issued necessary directives in this regard to Chief electoral officers of all States and Union territories.
The Commission has, in its direction, said that the candidates are required to declare in addition to their assets, educational qualification and criminal records, details of their social media accounts.
It stated that the use of social media during the campaign is important however the rules applicable to other media are equally applicable to it also.
The Commission has defined social media and divided it into five broad categories to leave no room for different interpretations. The commission’s definition of social media includes social networking services (such as Facebook) and Microblogs (such as Twitter), blogs, collaborative projects (such as Wikipedia), content communities (such as YouTube) and virtual game worlds (apps).
The restrictions applied to political advertisements in the traditional media including print and electronics have also been extended to the social media. According to the directives, all political ads need to be pre-certified before they are posted online. Candidates will also have to declare the expenditure on campaigning through the Internet.