Removing confusion in contestants’ minds, Election Commission of India has clarified that no pre-certification of content is required for the contestants to update it on their social media accounts like twitter and facebook. The ECI clarified that pre-certification is not required for a contestant even for political contents like message, comments, photo, video, that one load on his/her private social media account like personal blog, website during election campaign.
The commission has clarified that during campaigning if a contestant or a political party posts anything on its website or other social media platform it would not be considered as an advertisement and pre-certification would not be required from the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee.
Election Commission has also stated that the candidates would have to mention about their presence on social media platforms including e-mail id in the affidavit that is presented along with the nomination papers. Commission has also clarified that if any comment, photo or video is found to be hurting sentiments of any section or against established set of laws then it would be considered as violation of model code of conduct and action would be taken against such person.The advertisements given to e-papers by the candidates or political parties are subjected to pre-certification by the MCMC, clarified the commission.
