Heena Sharma Blog

Elections to nine Bihar Legislative Council seats, deferred due to the outbreak of coronavirus , will now be held on July 6. According to an Election Commission statement, nine members of the Bihar Legislative Council had retired on May 6. On April 3, the Commission had announced postponement of the polls due to the coronavirus pandemic and the countrywide lockdown. According to fresh dates, the notification for the elections would be issued on June 18 and the polls will be held on July 6. The counting will take place on July 6 evening itself after the conclusion of the polling as per laid down norms. Members of the Bihar Legislative Assembly (MLAs) will elect nine new MLCs in the elections. Read More

In a bid to reach out to voters, especially the young one, the ruling TMC and the opposition BJP in West Bengal have extended their fight to the social media with innovative ideas and catchy jingles. Dedicated teams comprising hundreds of volunteers are slogging away to ensure that the "Jumla metre" and " Pradhan mantri hisab do " campaign of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the "Main Bhi Chowkidar" music video of the BJP reach their target audience. From coming out with web series to catchy online songs to campaigns, both the parties are looking at making optimal use of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, besides traditional emails and SMS. Attacking the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the TMC has launched a web series "Pradhan Mantri Hisab Do" (Prime Minister, answer this). In this campaign, the party is releasing a short video everyday on twitter and Facebook comparing the "failure...

Did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi break election rules by addressing the nation on an anti-satellite test recently? Is it right to have a channel dedicated to the leader? Can the country's armed forces be called "Modi's soldiers"? Ahead of a general election that starts next week, the Election Commission of India (ECI) says it is swamped with hundreds of thousands of such questions and complaints of alleged violation of election rules, known as the model code of conduct. Many are coming via ever expanding social media. Opposition parties have accused the ECI of being biased towards the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which they say is giving Modi an unfair advantage in the election. There is even a threat to jail commission officials if Modi is ousted. The BJP denies getting any special treatment from the ECI. The ECI - an autonomous constitutional body tasked with the smooth conduct of the world's biggest democratic exercise with as many ...

Amid a raging debate over NaMo TV , DTH service provider Tata Sky Friday did a volte-face saying the channel is a "special service" and its content comes from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Initially Tata Sky, through a tweet, had called NaMo TV a "Hindi news service which provides the latest breaking news on national politics." But as debate raged over allegations of channel violating the model code of conduct in place for the general elections, Tata Sky in a statement said: "Namo TV is a special service available to all subscribers. The content of the service comes from BJP." "Tata Sky is a content distribution platform. For any content related queries please connect with the owners of the content," it added. Initially, Tata Sky had stated that the channel had been added to all subscribers account "as a launch offer." "There is no option to delete the individual channel," it had said in a separate tweet. ...

The Railways found itself caught on the wrong side of the model code of conduct yet again when passengers on Friday reported that tea was being served in paper cups with " main bhi chowkidaar " ('I'm also watchman') written on them. As the image of the paper cup tweeted by a passenger on Kathgodam Shatabdi went viral, the railways said its has withdrawn the cup and penalised the contractor. It has been claimed that tea was served in these cups twice. The advertisement on the cup was by Sankalp Foundation, an NGO. This issue comes days after the railways was found in violation of the poll code for issuing tickets with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pictures on them. Later, the railways said that it was an "unintentional and inadvertent mistake". "Reports that tea has been served in cups labelled as "main bhi chowkidar" have been investigated. This was without any prior approval of IRCTC. Explanation has been sought from sup...

Not just Facebook and Twitter, Google is also making an effort to ensure the authenticity of information on its advertisements and video platform as India heads towards General Elections in less than a month. On Thursday, the company said it is ensuring authoritative news content gets better play on YouTube, where videos have seen growth in watch time triple for content from authoritative sources in the last two years, said Tim Katz, the video platform’s director of news partnerships. YouTube, which is owned by Google, is ensuring there is news from credible sources that is put on the platform, with enough context. With elections less than a month away, the Indian government has been trying to address the issue of misinformation and fake news spreading through social media and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. Recently, the Parliamentary Committee on information technology met with senior executives of Facebook and Twitter and the Election Commission has also said soci...

Have you linked your voter ID with Aadhaar yet? Soon, linking of voter ID with Aadhaar maybe made mandatory. According to a report published in Economic Times, the Election Commission, in a shift in its stand, is preparing to pitch for the mandatory, legally backed, linking of voter IDs with Aadhaar number . "The commission will propose amendments to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, that will require citizens to link their Electoral Photo ID Card (EPIC) with the 12-digit Aadhaar, while ensuring privacy protection," the report said. In October, EC informed the Madras High Court it had no object linking Aadhaar with electoral rolls and voter ID card as sought in a public interest litigation to check bogus and invalid entries. The commission, however, said a decision has to be taken keeping in view the recent Supreme Court order on the Centre's flagship Aadhaar scheme. Read More Business Standard

Criminalisation of politics was felt in its strongest form during the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts which was the result of a collaboration of a diffused network of criminal gangs, police, customs officials and their political patrons, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. Referring to the report of the NN Vohra Committee, set up to study the problem of criminalisation of politics, the top court said the panel had referred to several observations made by official agencies, including CBI, IB and RAW, which unanimously expressed the opinion that criminal network was virtually running a parallel government. It said the committee also took note of the criminal gangs which carried out their activities under the aegis of various political parties and government functionaries. ALSO READ: NHPC moves Supreme Court against Delhi High Court order on arbitral award The apex court referred to the panel's report while holding today that all candidates will have to declare their crim...