EC responds to THE WEEK over questions raised on hiring of social media firms 'close' to BJP

EC says it needs to source manpower and logistics from govt departments and agencies

The Commission said that while maintaining a rather lean organisational setup in Delhi, it needs the services and assistance of various ministries and departments of the Union government as also the governments in the states and the Union territories | PTI The Commission said that while maintaining a rather lean organisational setup in Delhi, it needs the services and assistance of various ministries and departments of the Union government as also the governments in the states and the Union territories | PTI

The Election Commission on Monday strongly rejected questions raised about the hiring of certain companies to manage its social media accounts, including doubts about their perceived closeness to the BJP as also the criticism about engaging government bodies to hire the agencies, stating that the poll body, in the course of discharging its duties, needs to source manpower and logistics from various central and state departments and agencies to ensure smooth conduct of elections.

THE WEEK had reached out to the Commission for its response with regard to questions raised about the hiring of two social media agencies, TSD Corporation Ltd and ADG Online Solution Pvt Ltd. The hiring of these two agencies was done through government-owned NFDC Ltd and BECIL, respectively. Questions were raised about why the hiring was not done independently and it was alleged that the two agencies enjoyed a proximity to the ruling establishment. These issues were discussed in THE WEEK story dated August 7.

In its detailed response, the Commission said: “In the course of due discharge of its duties, it needs to source manpower and logistics from various Central and State departments/agencies to ensure smooth conduct of Elections. It may be recalled that for the Lok Sabha Elections 2019, elections were conducted across 10.36 lakh polling stations, spread across 543 constituencies, with more than 91 crore electors.”

The Commission said that while maintaining a rather lean organisational setup in Delhi, it needs the services and assistance of various ministries and departments of the Union government as also the governments in the states and the Union territories. “These services range from security arrangements; transportation of forces to reach respective places of deployment; polling staff on duty; provisioning of election material like Electronic Voting Machines, indelible ink or ensuring voter awareness through various platforms of media.”

It said resources are requisitioned from various Union government ministries, including the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Railways, and PSUs including ECIL and BEL.

“As far as media related work is concerned, services of  media units, and autonomous bodies of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting like DAVP, NFDC are utilised,” it said, adding that manpower taken from their empanelled agencies functions under the supervision and control of ECI officers.

As regards the hiring of the two social media agencies, the Commission said that a Social Media Communication Hub was established in the Commission in 2017. The poll body approached M/s Broadcast Engineering Corporation India Ltd (BECIL), a Government of India enterprise under the Ministry of I&B,  to identify empanelled agencies to engage professionally qualified manpower to execute the work under supervision and control of ECI officers. Social media executives through M/s ADG Online Solutions Pvt. Ltd. were engaged based on their professional experience.

The Commission also approached National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), an organisation under the Ministry of I&B, in January 2019, to provide ECI with a suitable agency for the voter awareness campaign on social media, specifically with regard to Lok Sabha elections of 2019. Professionally experienced executives from M/s TSD Corporation Ltd  were engaged from March 19, 2019 till May 31, 2019.

As regards the questions raised about the client list of the companies, with many from the ruling establishment, the Commission stated that it is understood that all these reputed agencies have several verticals and rather varied and diverse list of clients who could range from other government ministries and departments, PSUs, private sector or even political entities.

“There are inbuilt procedures for blacklisting etc. at various levels if any of the agencies is found to be subserving the interest of a political entity while working for ECI just as any official howsoever highly placed can be taken to task if found to be acting in a partisan manner after an empirical and indepth inquiry. There have been many instances of removal of such officials overnight from the election related tasks. Normally, such action by ECI invariably also has a bearing on their dossiers for the rest of service lives,” the Commission stated.

It also said that in any case, if the premise which seems to be inherent in these questions that anybody working in or for the government would be partisan in favour of the ruling party or combination of the day was to be accepted, there would not have been different political parties or entities winning elections to the Lok Sabha and to the Assemblies of the states at different times. 

“In fact, there have also been instances galore whereby the Lok Sabha election and Vidhan Sabha Elections which happened immediately thereafter or vice-versa have been the opposite of each other in terms of outcome. The role and maturity of the elector to whom the nomenclature of ‘Common Man’ is given rather condescendingly by most of the self-appointed elites is grossly underestimated,” the poll body said.

It also pointed out that no complaints of any conflict of interest of work done by agency staff working in the EC have been received during the process of Lok Sabha elections 2019 or thereafter.

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