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politics
election 2018

state to attend the rally and in return, they are offered
cash and food. In most cases, people are being offered
an amount of 500 per person to attend the rally with
free food for that day. Again, this amount is being paid
in cash and is unaccounted for but if you do the maths,
you will come to know the amount being spent by
a candidate.

social media spending
Nowadays candidates are giving their full attention
to all social media and digital platforms for all their
promotional activities. The election commission has
prescribed budget for advertisement and promo- there is a presumption of
tional activities for electronic media. The election
commission is keeping a hawk-eye in monitoring the innocence until you are
official pages of the candidates and expenditure done
by it but what is being in practice is something very convicted. But indian jails have
difficult to track. Most of the candidates have hired over four lakh criminals, of
good social media teams who not only run and man-
age the official pages but supporting pages too and it which 70 percent are under-
is difficult for the Election Commission to keep a tab
on these supporting or affiliate pages and the amount trials, which means they are
spend on the campaigns through them. One of the
recent cases that brought attention to this issue was not convicted, which also
Punjab’s Gurdaspur seat during the Lok Sabha elec-
tions 2019 from where the joint candidate of BJP-Akali means they are innocent. Yet,
Dal, Sunny Deol won the election. Vice-president of
congress party Himanshu Pathak had filed a com- you have taken away four
plaint against one of the supporting pages of the
actor ‘Fans of Sunny Deol’ claiming that the page of their fundamental rights
did pay promotions digitally at the time of elec- — right to liberty, right to
tions to support Deol’s social media campaign. Later
an amount of 1,74,644 was included in Deol’s poll freedom of movement, right
expenditure by the Chief Electoral Officer after an in-
quiry was conducted by a nodal officer of the media to occupation and right to
certification and monitoring committee of Gurdaspur.
ECI has set a “voluntary code of ethics”, according dignity. You can take away the
to which no party or candidate will be allowed to
run a political campaign on social media platforms four fundamental rights of
in the last 48 hours before the polling ends. The code
is derived to act against paid promotions which vio- those who are under-trial, but
late regulations set by the Election Commission. On you cannot debar them from
19th March 2019, the ECI convened a meeting with
the country heads of major social media companies contesting elections, which is
to discuss issues related to the use of social media
in the elections. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, not even a fundamental right.
WhatsApp, Google, TikTok have agreed to follow the
“voluntary code of ethics” during all the elections,
including the upcoming Maharashtra and Haryana
Assembly polls and various by-elections being held sY Quraishi
simultaneously.
As per an ECI release, issued on September 26, 2019, Former Chief Election Commissioner
the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
on behalf of its members has agreed to observe the
“Voluntary Code of Ethics” during all the elections,

tehelka / 31 october 2019 13 www.tehelka.com