The Election Commission recently came up with a list of rules under the model code of conduct which political parties need to follow on the online campaign-front. According to media reports, “It’s now mandatory for all candidates to declare their official accounts with different social media websites, seek the Commission’s permission before advertising on such platforms and also declare the expenditure incurred on running social media campaign and accounts. The latter will, henceforth, be added to a candidate’s total poll expenditure”.

Through these measures the Election Commission has recognised  how online presence can have a substantial impact on public opinion in the run-up to the 2014 elections. The question though is, how will the EC monitor the presence and activities of political parties and candidates in the online world? For apart from the official websites, Youtube channels, Facebook pages and Twitter handles there are thousands of pages which are managed by anonymous people who campaign for a particular party or leader.

While accepting that such pages could be “reasonably connected” to a political campaign, the Election Commission has not provided any specific remedies to handle the barrage of posts that clutter facebook timelines promoting a party or candidate. Also, any kind of monitoring or crack-down on these pages would enter the grey area of online censorship – an issue which has already become a burning topic because of the rampant misuse of the IT Act 2000.

Also a large number of these pages are not set up or even officially affiliated to any political party or candidate. They are set up by independent online campaigners who claim that the love for certain leaders, parties and ideologies makes them invest time, money and talent in setting up these pages. Newslaundry contacted several social media campaigners. Most of them were reluctant to share any personal details or the source of their funding. Their backgrounds varies from being techies with fulltime jobs to providing taxi services. Most of them handle not just one but multiple facebook pages.

Sudhansu Tiwari, (name changed)* an Information Technology Consultant and a big Modi fan says, “I am handling 12 more pages and all the work behind the scenes is done by my friends and a dedicated team of professionals”. All his pages ask people to vote for Narendra Modi. Similarly, his friend who is a photographer for the Incredible India campaign too puts in as much effort to source content and posts for the pages. They wear their love for NaMo on their sleeves. Tiwari says, “We are Modi lovers as simple as that…Namo Namo lovers”. His friend adds, “In my view he is the only leader who can and will lead the country in right direction and development”.

While on the face of it, the duo appear to be genuine Modi fans with no hidden agendas, a single question on the source of their expenditure made them livid. On being questioned on how they funded their various pages – after all, creation of memes, videos and other promotional material costs money – Tiwari and his friend accused me of being from the CBI. They ended the conversation by saying that “people’s support and love for Modi keeps them going”.

It’s not just “individuals” who have come up with such pages. Several lower rank party members also have unofficial pages asking for votes for their leaders. Vineet Gupta (name changed)*, who claims to be a Congress party worker in Begusarai, Bihar says he and many of his party co-workers manage pages asking for support for the Congress and its leaders. Gupta manages two not very popular pages – Congress Begusarai and Congressi. He spends four to eight hours a day on promoting the page. His posts ridicule BJP leaders in the crassest manner. He claims that he doesn’t take any money from the party to promote his page and whatever he does is in his individual capacity.

The page managers we spoke to dodged questions on the expenses of managing these pages. A simple search on facebook though, can give a fair idea of the expenses which would be incurred to promote a page or post – not to imply that any of these pages are using this method.

(Cost to promote a page from admin panel on facebook)

(Cost to boost a post on facebook )

This expenditure would only boost posts for a day. A fair estimate can be made of the amount of money being spent on promoting pages as some of these pages have 10,000 likes already and close to some 10 posts a day. Most of these managers have multiple pages and groups. Even if we were to accept that the people working “behind the scenes” to promote these pages do not charge a penny, the entire exercise needs to be supported by deep pockets.

We tried to contact the managers of the hugely popular Narendra Modi fan page, NaMo India, which is one of the fastest growing pages on facebook. In barely five months since it was launched, the page has over 2 lakh likes. The page contains detailed descriptions of Modi’s travels and speeches across the country, Modi Apps, memes, special festival greetings. There is no clarity on how the Election Commission would keep a watch on such pages. Clearly this is a part of political campaigning – especially since Vineet Gupta is a member of the Congress. Instead of rallying in the hot sun, he has taken to facebook to campaign for his leaders. And since it’s an “independent” page he is free to keep campaigning till the 11^th hour before Election Day.

As of now, all that the Election Commission has said is it would devise a mechanism to track such pages in consultation with the Ministry of Information and Technology. BJP IT cell chief Arvind Gupta, however, says that the Election Commission guidelines have only increased ambiguity as the online world has no “human or geographical boundaries”. He told Newslaundry that, “BJP is seeking an all-party meeting on the guidelines as monitoring and guidelines on the online campaign in the garb of censorship is not acceptable”. He also denied allegations leveled against Modi for orchestrating his online campaign with the help of fake profiles and paid pages.

What makes the job of monitoring online activities of political parties difficult is that much of the online political space in India has been taken over by trolls, fake followers, fake likes, ghost accounts and shadow boxing. The EC should encourage candidates and political parties to adopt a more direct and transparent mode of conversation with the electorate as used by Barack Obama in his extremely successful social media campaign during the 2012 Presidential elections. This would not only make the EC’s task easier but also make India’s online political discourse more meaningful.

* Names of the page managers have been withheld upon their request. 

Image By: Swarnabha Banerjee