HT Bureau

GUWAHATI, March 24: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has directed that no political party or candidate or any other organisation or person shall publish any advertisement in the print media on poll day or one day prior to the poll day in all the phases, unless the contents of political advertisements are pre-certified by the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) at the state or district level.

In the context of Assam, the restricted days of advertisement are March 26 and March 27 for first phase of elections, March 31 and April 1 for second phase of elections and April 5 and April 6 for the third phase of elections.

The ECI has further directed that in order to facilitate the process of pre-certification of the newspaper advertisements, MCMC at state or district level must examine and pre-certify all such advertisements received from the political parties, candidates and others expeditiously.