May 6 , 2019 ;
In a fresh reminder on Saturday, the Election Commission(EC) asked social media platform Facebook to take down any political advertisements during the 48 hours of silence period ahead of polls to avoid any violation.
The letter to Facebook, comes after Congress complained to EC about 600 active BJP Facebook ads during the silence period in the fourth election phase. Facebook responded to the EC notice on Sunday asking for specific violating advertisments, so the company can take action.
The missive stated that the EC has learnt of “numerous political advertisements” active on Facebook during the silence period on April 29 and that the company must “avoid any further violation”.
On April 30, Congress Legal Coordinator Varun Chopra sent a notice to EC with an annexed sheet of the Facebook public archive details of one advertisement by the BJP’s official Facebook page, that began running on April 28 and was seen by one to two lakh Facebook users.
This ad, and others, according to the Congress complaint, were shown in West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. On April 29, 71 seats went to polling, over half of which were in these four states. The Congress complaint included a copy of an April 29 Quint article outlining the same.
The EC also sent a response to Mr. Chopra on Saturday informing him that EC has instructed Facebook to take down political advertisements posted during the prohibited period as well as a chart of the number of EC notices to four social media companies and the number of takedowns.
EC sent Facebook 603 takedown notices of which 601 were implemented, according to the letter. EC notified Google/YouTube of five cases, Twitter of 49, and WhatsApp of 3. All of these three companies complied with all EC notices, the chart shows.
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