The Election Commission of India has ordered the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to halt its WhatsApp campaign with a letter from the prime minister asking for feedback. Terming the campaign a Model Code of Conduct (MCC) violation, the Election Commission of India ordered the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to ensure no more such messages are sent by the ministry.
The Election Commission of India was reacting to the MCC violation complaints filed across the country, including one filed in Chandigarh. The Chandigarh authorities referred the MCC violation to the Election Commission of India, after receiving it via the C-Vigil app, where a voter alleged misuse of government funds for a political campaign.
On the enquiry from the Election Commission of India, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has explained that the WhatsApp messages were been sent on March 15, before the announcement of the polls. The ministry explained that multiple people might have received it afterwards because of WhatsApp’s system architecture and network limitations.
The Election Commission of India, while ordering a stop of the campaign, ordered for a compliance report to be shared with its office. In his letter to MeITY, Narendra N. Butolia, senior principal secretary of ECI, ordered:
“The Commission has received complaints from various quarters that such messages are still being delivered on citizens’ phones. Since the MCC is now in force, you are hereby directed to ensure forthwith that no further delivery of ‘WhatsApp messages’ take place during MCC period. A compliance report in this regard may be sent immediately.”
While the Election Commission of India halted this exercise, it did not go further into enquiring about privacy violations of voters by MeITY. It is unclear on what basis the messages were sent to different people across the world by MeITY. The messages being delivered to foreign nationals has raised many questions on privacy violations in India.
The Election Commission of India has not really engaged on the issue of the role of personal data in elections. With the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 having been passed by the parliament, the ECI will be the body that is responsible for any privacy violations with regards to personal data being used in elections.
The Election Commission of India has to look into the role of private campaigns over social media and WhatsApp ideally, which the commission has been ignoring to regulate. Any complaints to chief electoral officers in the past over political messaging over phone calls and through communications apps have been ignored.
Srinivas Kodali is a researcher on digitisation and a hacktivist.
