New Delhi: As per the statement was given by Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat on Saturday, the current set of laws are not adequate to tackle the issue of the black money menace in elections along with anticipation of threats of Cambridge Analytica like data theft, data harvesting and fake news to the electoral process in the country.
Mr. Rawat was speaking on a symposium of ‘challenges to India electoral democracy’. He said that democracy does not run on whims and it needs traits like courage, integrity, character, and knowledge that are fast diminishing and are almost on the “verge of extinction” in the country.
The CEC underlined many issues and challenges that it faces now and said that clean elections are like a “wellspring of legitimacy” for the leadership and the people of the country and if this gets contaminated by such issues, the common man reacts in “cynical” way about the whole system, which is an area of concern.
“With the rise of fake news, with the rise of make-believe things, with the rise of all kind of machinations like data theft, data harvesting, profiling, targeted communication affecting not only communication but referendum world over and changing the outcome of any process which is meant to translate popular will in (taking) a healthy decision, in (choosing) a healthy representative government. That’s the potent threat every democracy in the world is facing,” Mr.Rawat said at the event organized by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi.
According to the election chief, the Election Commission was well aware of all those issues amongst many others similar to them.
“Here in our country, the Commission is seized of issues such as cyber security, securing our data so that Cambridge Analytica kind of things do not happen over elections, about misuse and abuse of social media platforms, about fake news, about all kinds of ills that get into whether it is management of electoral rolls, campaign finance, polling process and technology,” he said.
He specifically spoke over the issue of money power usage during elections and said that present laws cannot cater to the needs for them to ensure a complete check at this abuse and that is the reason “state funding” of polls is not possible as of now in India.
“Abuse of money is the main concern for India and in Indian elections. There has been a lot of talk for bringing about transparency in campaign finance, even people talk about state funding,” he said.
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