How a Reliance-funded firm boosts BJP’s campaigns on Facebook By Kumar Sambhav and Nayantara Ranganathan 14 Mar 2022 https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/3/14/how-a-reliance-funded-company-boosts-bjps-campaigns-on-facebook
Loopholes in how the Election Commission of India (ECI) applies the law and a selective application of Facebook’s rules and processes allowed India’s largest conglomerate to pump in millions of rupees to place and promote these surrogate advertisements to boost the reach and popularity of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in the lead up to the 2019 parliamentary elections and nine state elections. Surrogate advertisements promote a political candidate but are not directly funded or authorised by that candidate.
When Facebook did crack down on surrogate advertisements, ostensibly to ensure transparency and accountability, it did so by mostly targeting advertisers promoting BJP’s main opponent, Congress, but allowed pages like NEWJ (New Emerging World of Journalism Limited, is a subsidiary of Jio Platforms Ltd, to continue.)
Over the past year, The Reporters’ Collective (TRC), a non-profit media organisation based in India, and ad.watch, a research project studying political ads on social media, analysed data of all the 536,070 political advertisements placed on Facebook and Instagram from February 2019 through November 2020 to assess the influence of Facebook’s political advertising policies on elections in the country. They found that in those 22 months, Facebook’s advertising platform systematically undercut the political competition in the world’s largest electoral democracy, giving an unfair advantage to the BJP over its competitors.
Part 2: It's not the only firm covertly pushing the BJP. There are many others. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/3/15/inside-facebook-and-bjps-world-of-ghost-advertisers
Part 3: Out today: Facebook is actually charging a lower rate for the BJP than for parties like the Congress. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/3/16/facebook-charged-bjp-lower-rates-for-india-polls-ads-than-others