The Election Commission must order a fresh supply of clean chits if it must keep up with the controversial statements that BJP candidates, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have made during the current Lok Sabha elections.
Yes, the Election Commission did take action against PM Narendra Modi but by banning the other PM Modi i.e Vivek Oberoi.
The big question is, what about the BJP’s violations in cyberspace? For context, candidates, parties and their proxies have spent over Rs 45 crore on election advertisements on Facebook and Google. Over a 1,00,000 ads!
But here’s the newsflash – the EC has ignored and failed to check violations of the poll code on social media, particularly by the BJP.
This is surprising because on the eve of Holi, on 20 March, social media platforms including Facebook, Google, Twitter and TikTok had submitted to the Chief Election Commissioner something called a “Code of Ethics for General Elections”.
This was a voluntary agreement between the EC and platforms like Facebook to specifically ensure there are no violations of this mandatory 48-hour silence period.
However, not once so far has the EC either asked Facebook to take down an ad and neither has it pulled up the BJP for its violations.
So what are the issues that the EC has ignored regarding social media?
1. Regular Violation of Mandatory 48-Hour Silence Period
The Bharatiya Janata Party has violated the mandatory 48-hour silence period leading to and during each of the five phases of polling thus far in the Lok Sabha Elections.
What is this silence period? Unlike the Model Code of Conduct, which is a list of dos and don’ts, this silence period is a law under section 126 (1) of the Representation of People Act, 1951.
The section prohibits anyone from “display[ing] to the public any election matter” or “propagate any election matter to the public” for 48-hours till the end of polling in any phase.
However, so brazen has been the BJP’s violation of the 48-hour silence that on all the polling days so far, it ran ads targeted specifically at the states that were voting that day.
2. Proxy-BJP Pages
Who is the biggest spender on Facebook? No points for guessing, it’s the BJP –which spent Rs 3. 67 crore on over 1,900 ads since February.
In fact, three big spending proxy-BJP pages – Nation With NaMo, My First Vote for Modi and Bharat Ke Mann ki Baat – which masqueraded as independent supporter pages, and have spent over Rs 4 crore, were exposed by a HuffPost India investigation in April which revealed them to be linked to the BJP.
3. Bribe Charges – Offering NaMo Merchandise in Exchange for Vote
If this wasn’t enough, on 24 March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi retweeted a tweet by “NaMo Merchandise”, endorsing their “attractive merchandise” and asking his followers, “have you ordered yours?”
Two days later, on 26 March, one of the proxy-BJP page called “My First Vote for Modi” ran advertisements offering freebies from the same NaMo Merchandise in exchange for a pledge to vote for Modi. The Congress even wrote to the EC saying this “amount to bribery”, but nothing came of it.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)