The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Delhi and neighbourhood

NEWS AND VIEWS

PUNJAB

HARYANA

JAMMU & KASHMIR

HIMACHAL

REGIONAL BRIEFS

NATION

OPINIONS

LETTERS

BUSINESS

SPORTS

WORLD

SPECIAL COVERAGE

CHANDIGARH

LUDHIANA

DELHI

THE TRIBUNE SPECIALS

50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

TERCENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

D E L H I A N D N E I G H B O U R H O O D

Pre-certification must for use of social media in campaigning
New Delhi, October 31
With the social media emerging as the most convenient and powerful medium for campaigning, the Delhi Electoral Office has issued guidelines for its use in canvassing. The candidates will now be required to give detailed information of their email IDs and the authentic social media accounts at the time of filing affidavits.

BJP mulls tickets to five Muslim candidates
New Delhi, October 31
The BJP is considering first time to give tickets to five Muslim candidates in the constituencies where they are in majority with an idea to woo the minority votes. According to sources, the BJP high command is considering fielding Muslim candidates from Seelampur, Mustafabad, Ballimaran, Matia Mahal and Okhla where the minority electorate is from 40-60 per cent.

BJP to announce candidates' list after Diwali
New Delhi, October 31
Delhi BJP president Vijay Goel today said that the party tickets for the Delhi Assembly polls would be announced after Diwali.

EARLIER EDITIONS

	Cong list: 40 MLAs to be renominated October 31, 2013
	Vardhan failed to make his mark as Health Minister: Cong October 30, 2013
	Sonia-led panel okays renomination of 29 MLAs October 29, 2013
	NDMC to take over repairing work at CP October 28, 2013
	Onion prices to fall in 2-3 days: CM October 27, 2013
	Food ministry official, wife found dead October 26, 2013
	Two arrested for gangrape of minor October 25, 2013
	17-yr-old girl gangraped in car October 24, 2013
	313 FIRs filed against parties for violating code October 23, 2013

Pre-certification must for use of social media in campaigning
Himani Chandel
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 31
With the social media emerging as the most convenient and powerful medium for campaigning, the Delhi Electoral Office has issued guidelines for its use in canvassing.

The candidates will now be required to give detailed information of their email IDs and the authentic social media accounts at the time of filing affidavits. Every candidate or political party will have to apply to the Media Monitoring Committees or designated officer for the certification of all political advertisements on electronic media, social media websites and print media.

"No political advertisement will be released on the Internet-based websites, including social media, by political parties or candidates without pre-certification from competent authorities," said Vijay Dev, Chief Election Officer.

The candidates will also have to keep a separate and correct account of all expenditure incurred by them for advertisement on social media. This will include payments made to the Internet companies and websites for carrying advertisements and campaign-related operational expenditure like creative development of content, salaries and wages paid to the team of IT experts employed by the candidates.

The Election Office has defined social media as the medium of interacting among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and network.

"The social media has been broadly divided into five types, including collaborative projects, like Wikipedia, blogs and micro-blogs like twitter, content communities like YouTube, social networking sites like Facebook and virtual gaming world like applications," said Dev. The guidelines have been notified on the instructions of the Election Commission of India.

BJP mulls tickets to five Muslim candidates
Syed Ali Ahmed
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 31
The BJP is considering first time to give tickets to five Muslim candidates in the constituencies where they are in majority with an idea to woo the minority votes.

According to sources, the BJP high command is considering fielding Muslim candidates from Seelampur, Mustafabad, Ballimaran, Matia Mahal and Okhla where the minority electorate is from 40-60 per cent. In the last elections, the party had fielded two Muslim candidates: Irfan Ahmed from Okhla and Talat Sultana from Matia Mahal. These are the constituencies where the BJP has never won.

In the last elections, the BJP had fielded Sita Ram Gupta from Seelampur, Yogender Sharma from Mustafabad, Talat Sultana from Matia Mahal and M. L. Sodhi from Ballimaran. Except Okhla and Matia Mahal, the BJP candidates had lost the elections with a thin margin. If they had got some minority votes, they would have won.

The sources said that this is a political stratagem of the saffron party to impress the minority as it has a considerable number of votes in 35 constituencies out of 70.