WhatsApp comes under Election Commission scanner

The popular free messaging service WhatsApp will come under the Election Commission's scanner for messages that can disturb tranquillity of polls, especially with regard to hate speeches that was flavour of the recently conducted general elections.

Updated on: Nov 15, 2014, 01:00:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The popular free messaging service WhatsApp will come under the Election Commission's scanner for messages that can disturb tranquillity of polls, especially with regard to hate speeches that was flavour of the recently conducted general elections.

The poll watchdog has brought the messages circulated through the messaging service under regulation on electoral violation and have instructed directions to district officials in two poll-bound states Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand to keep a tap on WhatsApp messages.

The active users in WhatsApp had grown from about 20 million in August 2013 to 70 million - one-tenth of its total users in the world - in November 2014, according to portal statista.com.

In a first, the Election Commission has directed the chief secretaries of the two states to ensure that a complaint is registered in a police station for obnoxious material on social media including the free messaging services during the poll period.

It has also asked them to direct the service providers to block circulation of such messages if they vitiate the electoral level playing field. The EC have earlier told internet companies that they will have to remove the "objectionable" content on direction of its officials.

The poll-watchdog will also take cognisance of such complaints if evidence is provided for violation of the model code and other provisions of the Representation of People's Act (RPA). The EC can direct the district administration for registration of a case against those who had generated the message and circulate them.

The decisions adds another feather in the cap of the EC as the internet based free messaging service would be covered under elections rules for the first time. Earlier, only the social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter were covered.

Chief election commissioner VS Sampath on Thursday said that action to block WhatsApp messages and other material on social media will be taken whenever there is complaint. "We will try our best to ensure that new media does not disturb the electoral process in any way," he added.

The EC's decision came after a number of political parties complained that WhatsApp and other free messaging services has become a new mode of electioneering and was being used to polarise voters by delivering hate speeches.

The commission before this summer's general elections had issued guidelines for social media websites and instructed the internet companies to comply with its directions. However, official admit that monitoring and compliance to the EC guidelines was a "tough" task.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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