NEW DELHI: Concerned over hate campaigns and defamatory attacks in social media that have come to dominate political discourse during elections, eight former chief election commissioners (CECs) on Monday suggested that the Election Commission tackle them at source by persuading sites such as Twitter and Facebook to block them “in public interest”.
Alternatively, they suggested, the poll panel could engage with the parties to convince them to practise self-regulation on hateful propaganda. During a two-hour meeting with the former CECs and one ex-election commissioner, organised by the EC to elicit their suggestions on issues of concern like growing use of money-power, use of media and social media for hateful propaganda and anomalies in electoral rolls.
On social media attacks, when EC tried to explain it was not practical to crack down on every WhatsApp message, the ex-CECs suggested the poll panel to approach the social media sites to block hateful uploads at source.
The meeting was attended by
CEC O P Rawat and ECs
Sunil Arora and Ashok Lavasa, apart from former CECs M S Gill, J M Lyngdoh, T S Krishnamurthy, B B
Tandon, S Y Quraishi, V S Sampath, H R Brahma and
Nasim Zaidi and former EC GVG Krishnamurthy.
