Paid news costs to be added to poll account

Taking strict action against candidates who paid journalists or the management of a newspaper or a news channel to get a ‘favourable’ news item run during the election campaign, the electoral office of Delhi ordered the expenditure be added to the election expenses account of candidates under the ‘Paid News’ head.

According to the electoral office, a special committee which was formed to look into such charges and take action, identified 23 such instances where the candidates allegedly paid the media house. While the size of the news item was measured and the money that the candidate would have spent on the advertisement of such size was added to their expenses account, the electoral office has forwarded the list of the media houses to the Election Commission of India.

“We have sent a detailed list to the election commission. The commission can now take up the matter with regulatory bodies - Press Council of India in case of print media and broadcasting corporation in case of news channels,” a senior electoral officer said.

The candidates who were penalised by the electoral office include Mukesh Sharma, Sumesh Shokeen, Arvinder Singh and Ashok Jain of the Congress and Neel Daman Khatri, Jai Prakash, Manoj Shokeen, Rajeev Babbar, Rajesh Gehlot, Subhash Sachdeva, Parvesh Verma and Pawan Sharma of the BJP and Dheeraj Kumar Tokas and Saleem Saify of the BSP.

The expenditure added to the poll expenses ranged between ` 916 to ` 39,061 depending on the size of news and the circulation of the paper.

On the instructions of the ECI, the electoral office set up a Media Certification and Monitoring Committee which looked into the complaints of paid news. Sources said there were about 80 complaints of which the electoral office took action on 23.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/national-news/item/3843-paid-news-costs-to-be-added-to-poll-account.html