Messages on blogs, social media not to be treated as political ads: Election Commission

Kolkata: Any political content in the form of messages, comments, photos, videos on blogs, social media would not be treated as political advertisement, the Election Commission said on Friday.

"Therefore these will not require any pre-certification," the OSD in CEO`s office Amit Roy Chowdhury said here. Such contents in accounts of political parties or candidates also would not be treated as political advertisement and would not be subject to any direction or guidelines issued by the Election Commission, Roy Chowdhury said. The Election Commission earlier had brought social media under its scanner for the first time ahead of the Lok Sabha election to monitor spending by political parties. Accordingly, the EC was keeping a close vigil on Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others saying that spending on these platforms by political parties would be strictly monitored. The EC also set up state and district level Media Certification and Monitoring Committees at the state and district levels to keep a tab on expenses incurred by political parties and check instances of paid news in the print and electronic media.