‘PAID NEWS’: PUNJAB TOPS POLL PANEL LIST
Monday, 09/09/2013
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
NEW DELHI: More than 1,400 cases of alleged paid news were detected by the Election Commission in the past four years during the assembly polls held in 17 states.
The maximum of 523 cases were detected during the assembly polls in Punjab last year, followed by Gujarat (414), Himachal Pradesh (104) and Karnataka (93), according to official data.
As many as 97 such cases were reported in Uttar Pradesh, while 30 instances of paid news were detected in Uttarakhand and nine in Goa.
In the states which went to the polls in 2011, Kerala had 65 such cases, Assam 27, Tamil Nadu 22, West Bengal eight and Puducherry three. In Bihar, during the assembly polls of 2010, 15 such instances were detected.
Except for Assam, none of the north-eastern states reported any instance of paid news and there were no cases registered in Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Manipur.
The total cases detected were 1,410 since 2010 till the Karnataka elections this year.
A number of candidates were issued show-cause notices after these instances were reported and the EC is adjudicating these cases.
The EC has created an exclusive wing, election expenditure monitoring cell, to monitor cases of paid news and has taken onboard a team of income tax sleuths to check the menace during the polls.
