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New Delhi : Election Commission of India (ECI) on Sunday announced schedule for Lok Sabha Elections 2019.Voting to elect the 17th Lok Sabha will take place in seven phases between April 11 and May 19. The Model Code of Conduct came into effect immediately after the announcement.
In a release to media, it’s made clear that all provisions of the Model Code of Conduct will be applicable to content on social media too. Here are the key points related to social media from ECI media release -
(c) Use of Social Media in election: Commission has clear guidelines with regards to use of social media by political parties and candidates in elections. Followings are the key points of these guidelines –
a) Candidates are required to furnish details of his/her social media account (if any) at the time of filing of nominations.
b) Since Social Media is also electronic media by definition, all political advertisement on Social Media will also require precertification from Media Certification & Monitoring Committees (MCMC).
c) Candidates and political parties shall include all expenditure on campaigning, including expenditure on advertisement on social media in their election expenditure account. This among other things shall include payments made to internet companies and websites for carrying advertisements and also campaign related operational expenditure on making creative development of content, salaries and wages paid to the team of workers employed to maintain their social media account.
d) All the provisions of Model Code of Conduct shall also apply to the content being posted on social media by candidates and political parties.
(d) Monitoring of Electronic and Social Media:
(i) All the election management related news would be monitored vigorously on all the major national and regional news channels during elections. If any untoward incident or violation of any law/rule is noticed, action would be taken immediately. Reports of monitoring would also be forwarded to the CEOs concerned. Office of CEO will ascertain status on each and every item and file ATR/Status Report. Various Social Media platforms shall also remain under the close and stringent vigil of the Commission for any content aimed at vitiating the electoral process or designed to disturb peace, tranquility, social harmony and public order.
(ii) Commitments by Intermediaries including Social Media platforms Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) to workout the details accordingly. With the input of Facebook, Twitter, Google, WhatsApp and Share Chat, IAMAI has already responded and confirmed its eagerness to cooperate with the ECI to uphold the integrity and legality of the political campaigns conducted on the platforms of the intermediaries. Some of the specific commitments are as follows:-
i. Intermediaries have already started awareness campaigns for their users highlighting the activities of the ECI and this will cover awareness campaigns regarding unlawful conduct during the election particularly, the prohibited period of 48 hours, under Section 126.
ii. All the platforms have agreed to establish priority channels for the ECI for quick response.
iii. All the platforms have taken specific measures to appoint grievance officers for upcoming election.
iv. The platforms will deploy appropriate fact checkers which scan the fake news, abuse etc.
v. Advertisements and pages are being made more transparent.
vi. Platform are already taking actions against fake accounts, spam etc. by deploying fact checkers. Each of these platforms has created a mechanism to accept only precertified political advertisements during the elections and will share the expenditure incurred on this account with the elections authorities for the purposes of accounting.