Election Commission bars newspaper ads in Gujarat on Dec 8 and 9
New Delhi, December 5: After the Election Commission announced the schedule for assembly polls in Gujarat, all the political parties are using various modes including newspaper, social media, TV to seek votes of people. But taking a note on this, Election Commission has barred the newspaper ads on 8th and 9th December of this year in Gujarat.
Notably, the Election Commission on Monday issued a notification stating that no newspaper advertisement be published on December 8 and 9 in poll-bound Gujarat without its prior clearance. According to the notification, political parties, candidates and other organizations will not be able to publish any advertisement in print media on coming Friday and Saturday without its prior approval in Gujarat.
As the first phase of voting in the state will take place on Saturday the Election Commission has asked political parties and candidates to get the advertisements pre-certified from the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee at the state and district levels before their publication.
The Commission also said that the decision has been taken in view of past instances of advertisements of offending and misleading nature in print media on such occasions which vitiate the elections. In its direction to the Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer, the Election Commission asked to issue directions to all political parties, candidates and newspapers in this regard.
Interestingly, Gujarat will decide the fate of BJP and Congress in two phases. The first phase of Gujarat polls will be held on 9 December 2017 for 89 seats while the second phase of voting will be held on 14 December 2017 for remaining 93 seats. Counting of votes will be done on December 18 of this year.
Currently, BJP has 120 legislators in Gujarat assembly, while the opposition Congress has 47 MLAs. While the latter had won 59 seats in the last assembly polls in 2012, a dozen of its legislators had recently left the party with some of them joining the ruling BJP. The term of the 182-member Gujarat Assembly ends on January 22.