The Election Commission of India on Thursday has directed that no political party, candidate, organisation or any person will publish any advertisement in the print media on February 3 and 4 unless the contents of the advertisement proposed to be published have been pre-certified by the political parties and candidates from the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) committee.
This came after many instances of advertisements of offending and misleading nature have brought to the Election Commission’s notice in the past.
A similar direction has been issued to all the newspapers in Goa and Punjab asking them not to publish any advertisement in the print media on the same dates which has not been pre-certified by the said MCMC.
The Commission further said that in order to facilitate the process of pre-certification of the newspaper advertisements and as instructed above, MCMC at state/district level be immediately alerted and activated in order to examine and pre-certified all such advertisements received from the political parties, candidates and others.
