4pm News Network: The campaign period for the Maharashtra Assembly elections has come to an end…. During the campaign for these elections, there has been a fierce battle from the electorate to social networks. Meanwhile, five social organizations met and published a report on the political parties’ electoral campaign on social networks. This report states that in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Mahayuti alliance (BJP, Shiv Sena Shinde faction, NCP Ajit Pawar faction) will have preference in ads from the company Meta, which runs Facebook. that ‘Meta’ has also changed its rules for this campaign…. And the BJP has been given freedom to violate the law…. At the same time, Mahavikas Aghadi has alleged that “the BJP and the Mahayuti alliance are walking on the path of injustice… and propaganda is being carried out to defame our candidates through shadow pages…. This is related to the BJP’s polarization agenda….
We tell you that this report was disseminated by the social organizations ‘Dalit Solidarity Forum’, ‘EKO’, ‘Hindu for Human Rights’, ‘Indian American Muslim Council’ and ‘India Civil Watch International’. Various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from the company ‘Meta’ are being widely used in the campaign for the Maharashtra Assembly elections. At the same time, this report claims that Meta is changing its rules in such a way that it will promote the BJP alliance. This report has been published on the website of the organization ‘EKO’. The main conclusion of this report is that ‘Meta’ is being given freedom to violate the laws of the Electoral Commission during the social media campaign in this election…. According to the ‘Transparency Report’ released by Meta Company on political campaigns, the BJP-led alliance has spent at least Rs 4.2 crore so far on various Meta platforms alone… On the other hand, Mahavikas Aghadi, led by Congress, has so far spent Rs 1.37 crore….
At the same time, this report has revealed that ‘hidden advertising’ has the largest share in all these…. According to the report, Meta has pushed hidden ads of Mahayuti and BJP on all platforms. In this case, boosting means making an ad reach more people on a medium like Facebook. ‘Shadow pages’ are pages that promote political propaganda. Although these are not the official pages of political parties… For example, a page called ‘Dadacha Vada’ was started to promote NCP-led Ajit Pawar before the elections… Similarly, ‘Maharashtra Counts’ , ‘Many shadow pages with names ‘Majhi Ladki Bahin’, ‘Mahabighadi’, ‘Kasai Na Sheth’, ‘Eknath Brigade’, ‘Hindutvadi Bana’, ‘Bring back Eknath’ etc. They are making political propaganda…. Let us tell you that these pages do not exist direct official pages of political parties…. Therefore, political parties are not responsible for the content that is disseminated in them….
Let us tell you that as per the claims made in this report, on one hand, the official page of BJP ‘BJP Maharashtra’ is making announcements about plans, policies and promises of the government… on the other hand, through these ‘pages on the shadow’ Religious Polarization is spreading from…. At the same time, a lot of content on Maratha caste and reservation issues has been published on these pages… The report says that the Meta company is helping to ‘promote’ several parallel pages of BJP more than the official page. .. According to the report, BJP’s parallel page ‘Lekha-Jokha Maharashtracha’ is spending even one rupee on its campaign. So its reach is ten times greater than the reach achieved by spending one rupee on the official website of BJP…. This difference is also visible between the BJP and its allies…. The report claims that BJP’s shadow page gets ninety-one impressions for every rupee spent… while Shiv Sena’s shadow page (Eknath Shinde) gets fifty-seven and NCP’s shadow page (Ajit Pawar) gets only twenty-eight impressions… That’s how it was. He said in this report that in this also Meta Company is giving more benefits to BJP….
On the one hand, Meta claims that we have very strict policies on political campaigns… On the other hand, this report says that the verification information provided in the disclaimers of these hidden pages is useless or non-existent… So far, Mahayuti has spent three point three two million rupees on unauthorized hidden pages… and fifty one lakh rupees have been spent on advertising unauthorized hidden pages of Mahavikas Aghadi… According to the report, the comparison of Mahavikas Aghadi Mahayuti ha spent seven times the amount on…. ‘Meta’ is not only helping Mahayuti to promote parallel pages…. Rather, it is also helping to violate the model code of conduct by making government advertisements… The report claims that the government has spent an additional Rs 2.24 crore on political advertisements during this period… According to this report, Mahayuti has spent a total of 9.69 million rupees on advertisements… While Mahavikas Aghadi has spent one point eight seven million rupees….
According to the information, not only the official page and the shadow page of the party… In fact, social media sites of individual candidates are also violating election laws… Each candidate can spend up to Rs 40 lakh for campaigning during the election period… However, Ajit Pawar’s official page has not crossed this limit …. But along with this, an advertisement of twelve point five lakh was also made from the hidden page ‘Dadacha Vada’…. According to the Supreme Court order, all types of campaign advertisements during the election period must be previously certified by the Election Commission…. However, the report states that these pages do not follow these rules…. That they are directly or indirectly associated with political parties…. It has also been said in this report that despite being told that these shadow pages are doing ‘shadow political advertising’ in violation of Indian electoral laws as well as ‘Meta’ policies… Meta has not taken any action on these pages….
Maharashtra state BJP co-chief spokesperson Ajit Chavan has questioned the credibility of the social organizations that published this report. And he said that all the civil society organizations that have published this report…. It is closely associated with Mahavikas Aghadi…. These organizations are not trustworthy at all… And they are organizations with direct opinions against the BJP…. So the basic question is how much confidence should be given to the report…. Responding to Mahavikas Aghadi’s accusations, he said that they are talking about Shadow Panne…. But these shadow social and human rights organizations or organizations acting in the name of caste and religion are the capital of Mahavikas Aghadi…. Mahavikas Aghadi is being promoted in this way…. Who spends money on them?… This is an important issue….
In this report, some basic accusations have been made against Meta Company…. The report claims that META, in particular, has forced the BJP to implement its own policies…. And give permission to violate the rules of the Electoral Commission…. The official spokesperson for Meta has given his position on the matter…. However, he has not given any official response on the demand of giving more concessions or exemptions to the BJP. Meta said we took action against those ads…. Those who violate our rules…. We have taken steps like this before too…. And it will continue to do so in the future too…. If someone continually violates rules like this… then they may have to face punitive actions… And he said that anyone who wants to use our platform for political electoral campaigning… First has to ask our permission… Advertisers must also follow all laws applicable to political campaigns. We have removed ads that violate our policies….
