EC: Messages on blogs, social media not to be treated as political advertisements

April 11, 2014

The Election Commission (EC) held that any political message in the form of comments, pics, videos or messages on blogs, social media would not be treated as a political advertisement. Thus, these don’t need any pre-certification and are not subject to any rules or guidelines released by the Election Commission. Even any such message in accounts of political parties or candidates also would not be treated as a political advertisement.
Earlier, EC had brought in social media under its radar for the very first time ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in order to supervise spending by political parties. Consequently, the EC was maintaining a close watch on Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc. and expenditure on these platforms by political parties.
At the state and district levels, the Election Commission has established State and District level Media Certification and Monitoring Committees respectively to keep a watch on the spendings by political parties and control cases of paid news in the print and electronic media.

« Previous Post Next Post »