District Collector P.I. Sheikh Pareed, who is also the district election officer, has said that media certification and monitoring committee has been formed to keep a tab on the phenomenon of paid news during the by-election to Piravom Assembly constituency.
News items or advertisements through visual, audio, and print media benefitting candidates will be considered as paid news. The committee will decide on matters before it in compliance with the Press Council stipulations. The cost of a news item or advertisement identified as paid news will be included in the campaign expenditure of the candidates concerned.
Paid news was very much in use in some parts of the country during the last election to the Parliament. It was in this backdrop that the Election Commission decided to form the media certification and monitoring committee.
Additional District Magistrate E.K. Sujatha is in charge of the committee. Deputy directors of the Press Information Bureau and Information and Public Relations and the field officer of the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity are members of the committee.
The committee will keep a daily watch on news and news-related programmes and advertisements in newspapers, radio, and television based on which reports will be submitted to the District Collector and observers. Flow of SMSs will also be examined.
Other official-level committees have also been formed by the Election Commission to supervise election-related matters.
A meeting of political parties will be held at Muvattupuzha on Monday to explain the model code of conduct.
No one filed nomination before the returning officer and the assistant returning officer on Saturday, the fourth day for filing papers. So far, only the BJP candidate K.R. Rajagopal and independent candidate K. Padmarajan have filed nominations.
The hearing on applications for entering names in voter's list was completed on Saturday. The final list will be published on February 29. Election Deputy Collector S. Shanavas and other election officials were at Muvattupuzha to supervise the hearing.
The expenditure observer appointed by the Central Election Commission, K. Veerabhadra Reddy, was in Piravom on Saturday. He held discussions with surveillance squads and gave directions to them. Surveillance squads keeping an eye on campaign expenditure and observance of the model code of conduct and video squads are active in the constituency.
