Special panel to monitor social media activities this time

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 24

This time, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections 2019, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been keeping a special eye on social media activities of political parties and leaders.

In Jalandhar too, a special committee has been formed which has been keeping a track of various messages that were being circulated via social media apps.

District administration officials said vigil was being kept over messages which are forwarded and shared and may spread hate crime via various social media apps.

A team has been constituted at the district level and 24-hour checking is done by team members and pages on various social networking sites are also being checked.

Also, if some messages having some hate content or any promotion of any party is seen, a meeting would be held and notices would be sent to offenders.

It is common that ahead of the elections, political parties tend to publicise themselves using various social media apps and networking sites such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and being vigilant in this scenario was the task that the members of the committees are entrusted with.

Dr. Karuna Raju, Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab, said this time, experts had been roped in to check social media activities, and forwarded messages from WhatsApp, YouTube and Twitter would be monitored continuously.