Electoral Systems

How a Reliance-Funded Firm Boosts BJP’s Campaigns on Facebook Kumar Sambhav and Nayantara Ranganathan
March 27, 2022 https://janataweekly.org/how-a-reliance-funded-firm-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 to continue.

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.

Facebook allowed a firm funded by Reliance to work the legal loophole to publish surrogate advertisements in favour of the BJP and help it reach a wider audience.

From February 2019 through November 2020, NEWJ placed 718 political advertisements over a period of 22 months and 10 elections, that collectively were viewed more than 290 million times by Facebook users, according to the Ad Archive data. The company spent 5.2 million rupees ($67,899) on these advertisements.

Many of these advertisements lit the fuse of anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiments, Tommy-gunned BJP’s opponents and critics, and eulogised Modi’s government.

2018. In mid-November, Reliance Group company Reliance Industrial Investment and Holdings Limited (RIIHL) took over NEWJ with a 75 percent equity stake. It then lent the company 84 million rupees ($1.1m) via convertible debentures. NEWJ ended the financial year in March 2019 with revenues of a paltry 3.37 million rupees ($44,003) on which it netted a net loss of 22.06 million rupees ($288,046). 

Next year, Reliance pumped in another 125 million rupees ($1.63m) again through debentures in NEWJ. For the financial year ending March 2020, NEWJ did not record any revenues but did have advertising promotional expenses of 27.3 million rupees ($356,467), up from 6.06 million rupees ($79,128) the previous year.

Jio lent another 84.96 million rupees ($1.12m) to NEWJ at a negligible 0.0001 percent annual interest rate in the financial year ending March 2021. 

ECI and Facebook shut eyes

To insulate elections from money power, Indian election laws cap the money a candidate can spend on campaigns. If a third party, with no declared association with the candidate, pays for that candidate’s advertisements in print and electronic media, the ECI considers it as the candidate’s spending. The ECI also investigates instances where paid promotions are camouflaged as news in the traditional media. If found that a piece of “news” was indeed paid for to promote a candidate, the ECI adds the actual or notional expenditure on the advertisement to the candidate’s election expenses.

These rules, however, are not applied to the advertisements placed on social media.

In 2013, the ECI made it mandatory for all political parties, candidates and their authorised agents to get social media advertisements pre-certified from the commission and report the expenditure on them. But it kept the advertisements placed by third parties, entities not officially linked to the candidates, out of this regulation, leaving the window open for surrogate advertisements.

In its October 25, 2013 order, the ECI said social media was part of the electronic media and the advertisements would be regulated in a similar fashion. But it added that it was still considering how to deal with content posted by people other than the candidates and their parties “in so far as they relate to, or can be reasonably connected with, the election campaigning of political parties and candidates”.

Govt Has Cleared Linking Of Aadhaar & Voter Data. Past Experience Reveals How It Can Be Manipulated by KUMAR SAMBHAV 27 Dec 2021  https://article-14.com/post/govt-has-cleared-linking-of-aadhaar-voter-data-past-experience-reveals-how-it-can-be-manipulated-61c937a621c09 

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which manages Aadhaar, admitted that the data of 78 million people had indeed been illegally accessed and used to profile voters. Around the same election, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana deleted about 5.5 million voters from electoral rolls after their Aadhaar numbers were linked to voter identity cards, without the mandatory door-to-door verification. Many voters protested. 

The Reporters’ Collective examined internal documents of investigations conducted by state police and the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the two cases to detail the modus operandi of the political parties involved and the role of watchdog agencies...

Election Commission Must Count All VVPAT Slips to Protect Electoral  Integrity  M G Devasahayam 22 Feb 2022  https://www.newsclick.in/Election-Commission-Must-Count-All-VVPAT-Slips-Protect-Electoral-Integrity   
Every EVM has a VVPAT, but the paper slips are not counted to verify the votes polled and counted. This is why people fail to trust the election results.

The design and implementation of EVMs and the results of both software and hardware verification are not public, nor open to a full independent review. The Voter Verifiable Paper Trail or VVPAT system does not allow voters to verify the slip before the vote is cast. Due to the absence of end-to-end (E2E) verifiability, the present EVM system is not verifiable and, therefore, unfit for democratic elections.

There are two votes now--one recorded in the EVM and one printed by the VVPAT. Rule 56D(4)(b) of the Conduct of Election (Amendment) Rules, 2013, provides for the primacy of the VVPAT slip count over the electronic tally of ballots cast and calculated on the EVMs. Therefore, there is no justifiable reason why all VVPAT slips should not be counted in every Assembly Constituency to assuage suspicions in voters’ minds that their votes have not been recorded and counted accurately.

the false claims of certain ECI officials that counting all VVPAT slips to declare results will take several days. It is common knowledge that under the paper-ballot system, even in larger Parliament or Assembly Constituencies, votes were counted and results declared within 16 or 18 hours. Counting 100% VVPAT slips will not take longer than this. If need be, mechanical sorters can hasten the counting process.

Page Under Construction..

We need a public hearing on the Exit Polls to examine the designers, and data collection and tabulation process.. and the conversion of voting percentages to seats . 

SG: Exit polls are carried out by asking people whom they voted for when they exit the polling booth. It is possible knowing the terror of bjp , and knowing who owns everything, people say what they think is safe and necessarily the truth. So more than transparency it reflects on the political power that exists in such places

JD. How exactly is the question asked, to whom, sampling methodology, and corelation of result with disaggregation based on sample and constituency wise spread, both in terms of vote share and that impact on no of seats. What is the extrapolation formulae etc. The sample targets segment wise and the actual collection. It is not that every voter will be able to understand it, but civil groups could have rating, rankings and public scrutiny so that the poll agencies and the media houses work to some standards.

SS: The exit poll results were publicised  after the completion of regular poll. The essential purpose of the exit poll is to increase the TRP and thereby the advertisement revenue. The very fact that for the same state exit polls by different agencies offer - at times strikingly, different results should make one discount the significance of such polls. Asking for some sort of "control" - other than the restrictions on timing already in place, may very well turn out to be counterproductive; particularly, in the prevailing conditions.  I. Results from different agencies are different.
II. Assuming there's only one result, it's either accurate or close to accurate or wide off the mark.
III. Whatever may be the case, results for individual constituencies are not available.
IV. Even without any exit poll, the potential MLAs can very much be sounded out unless they're cordoned off.
V. So, what's the point? 

JD. The line that nothing can be done, the system is corrupted and till we defeat capitalism nothing can be done, is too defeatist. Every one agrees that there is a nexus (money power etc).. but there needs to be some checks.. not so much through regulation, but more in terms of disclosure.

But exit polls are done only after elections are over.
JD The exit polls are used to pressurise potentially winning candidates, into shifting parties.. they are most vulnerable at this point, as they have gone for broke at this stage... 

After exit polls, senior BJP & Congress leaders in Uttarakhand   https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/after-exit-polls-sr-bjp-cong-leaders-in-ukhand/articleshow/90088566.cms   While BJP rushed senior leader Kailash Vijayvargiya on Sunday to assist party leader and former CM Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank in preparing for any political exigency, Congress deputed Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Hooda to Dehradun on Tuesday. Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel is scheduled to arrive in the city on Wednesday and stay put in the state capital till things take a final shape after the results. 
Kautilya Singh / TNN / Mar 9, 2022,

Of much greater significance is the opinion poll. That may influence the voters' mood and inclination.  

JD: But isnt that a important contribution to the democratic process, provided that there is a level playing field and a "quiet time"  We need more transparency.. on both the exit as well as opinion. The transparency should also percolate to the amount of finance each channel has got from different parties, Corporate,
 
Shivam Vij  in how to win an election writes about the power of the exit poll in swinging votes. People (undecided) will to vote for a candidate they believe will win. So it’s important to show BJP is winning.  

Why Axis MyIndia does exit polls but not a pre-poll seat forecast  https://theprint.in/politics/why-axis-myindia-does-exit-polls-but-not-a-pre-poll-seat-forecast/237277/  SHIVAM VIJ 
19 May, 2019   Axis MyIndia's head Pradeep Gupta Reasons:  political clients, ( putting out opinion polls numbers just before elections upsets someone or the other.) surveyors' safety (When the surveyors visit after an opinion poll, to, say, do the exit poll, they often meet hostile locals)  and a long-drawn election (It is not useful to do a survey when candidates have not been announced in many places) .

Six reasons why the media should stop publishing opinion and exit polls
The media should have more faith in their reporters than in unscientific surveys. https://www.newslaundry.com/2015/11/24/six-reasons-why-the-media-should-stop-publishing-opinion-and-exit-polls  By Shivam Vij 24 Nov, 2015

As it is the Indian media’s credibility sinks further with every news cycle. By taking opinion and exit polls seriously, news channels are trading credibility for TRPs. They need to collectively decide that they don’t need these surveys to gauge public mood in elections.  A post-poll survey is one that is conducted a day after the voting, whereas an exit poll is conducted by surveying voters as they come out of the polling booth. A post-poll survey is by design less likely to get it wrong.

We don’t need surveys.. 1) They are unscientific: 2) They don’t help us gauge public mood: 3) Media doesn’t spend enough to conduct good surveys: 4) They possibly hurt democracy: 5) They never get it right: 6) They are prone to political manipulation:

Since polls, eco survey, ratings and all such exercises affect democratic functioning all of them by whatever name should be subjected to scrutiny, so that journalists and citizen journalists can comment on them.