Social media platforms are full of massive political ads due to the first phase of general elections. Advertisers spent over ₹1.5 crores on Facebook, as it is the world’s largest social network. It boasts of 300 million users in India – nearly ten-times the number of users that Twitter has in the country. Facebook appears to have the strongest advertising hold on the 2019 Indian elections.
As per the data available with the social networking giant’s Ad Library, which includes ads related to politics and issues of national importance that have been run on Facebook or Instagram, shows that advertisers in India have already spent ₹8.3 crore in less than previous two months.
Recently, Facebook has released its own ad archive, which had over 51,000 political ads over two months starting February 2019. The data also shows that it is the supporters of political parties who are drumming up support on social media in favour of their parties. It indicates that the BJP is consistently leading the spending with a huge margin, while the Congress and other regional parties are trying to catch up.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’, leads the spending chart with over ₹2.2 crore with more than 2,000 ads. A pro-BJP Page, ‘My First Vote For Modi’, comes second with an overall spending of ₹61 lakh. The advertisers of ‘votes for Modi’, recently increased their spending with ₹46.6 lakh just in one week, during the March 17-March 23 period. Another spending amount is followed by 'Nation with NaMo' page that has spent ₹52.24 lakh and 'MyGov India' that has an ad spent of ₹25.27 lakh in the said time period.
The Indian National Congress has spent around ₹7 lakh since February on the Facebook Page, out of which more than ₹5.40 lakh was spent during the seven-day period from March 17- March 23. It clearly indicates that the Congress party is ramping up its spending on social media as the elections approach, although it lags far behind the BJP and its affiliates. Apart from these two primary political parties, some of the regional parties, in fact, are spending more on Facebook than the Congress. The Facebook Page of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), President Naveen Patnaik has spent around ₹35 lakh on ads. Similarly, the political advocacy group “Indian Political Action Committee”, which is advertising for YSR Congress, has spent approx ₹33 lakh since February. Due to these whopping ads, the government had warned social media platforms of strong action, that no attempt should be made to influence the country's electoral process through undesirable means. Facebook had said, political advertisements on its platform will carry a 'disclaimer' offering details about those who are responsible for running the ad. It is due to the social media giant, which looks to bring transparency into political ads ahead of elections in India. But this information does not necessarily disclose the names of the individuals or organisations. This was done to give people more information about who is responsible for the ads consumers’ see. But the contact information provided by these pages are not reliable. Like, the phone numbers given by ‘My First Vote For Modi’ and ‘Nation With NaMo’ are 6372802105 and 6372802059 respectively. Apart from the last three digits, the contact numbers match. Searching for both the numbers on Treucaller throws up the identical result ‘not yet available’. Calling up the numbers is also futile because both are switched off. The only lead that we have is the address provided by these pages, which matches BJP headquarters in Delhi. This raises two pertinent questions, one: does the BJP fund these pages to sponsor political ads to favour their party?; two: if the BJP is responsible, has the investment been disclosed to the Election Commission? This indicates that despite making strict laws and policies, one can not truly get the right information, which leaves all the questions opened to all, which also results in violation of election laws. It states, that offering of products on the pages and websites are not acceptable and the bigger concern is the veiled bribing of voters. Under the Representation of the People Act, one is not supposed to influence voters with any offers. It must be considered under the Act whether the voters are being influenced by undue influencers. Coincidentally, a lot of products are available for sale on the official webpage of PM Modi as a part of ‘NaMo merchandise.’ In fact, the Prime Minister himself advertises some of the products from his Twitter handle. Both these pages offer ‘attractive prizes’ in the form of NaMo merchandise to anyone pledging to vote for PM Modi
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