Mobile cos to pay a price for free and fair polls

The Election Commission, for the first time, has banned bulk text (SMS) messaging either by candidates standing for an election or by political parties to voters in the 48 hour period before start of voting in Assembly constituencies in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

The two-phase polling in Gujarat is scheduled for December 11 and 16, while the second and last round of polling in Himachal Pradesh is scheduled for December 19.

As this ban is likely to be extended to all future elections, mobile service providers will have to live with the idea of losing what used to be a revenue windfall for them during elections.

The text messages are usually sent through direct marketing companies. These companies, who also call unsuspecting users offering credit cards among other wares, use special software to send the same message to thousands of mobile numbers.

Some firms also use web portals that allow free messaging, a sort of cottage industry.

Bulk messages are cheaper than normal messages and the rate can be as low as 20 paise or as high as 50 paise, depending on the volumes, a mobile phone company executive said, adding that the total business generated during election time was hard to quantify.

"The hit will be taken by direct marketing companies and the service provider both," he added.

Announcing this decision here today, chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami said mobile service providers had agreed to cooperate with the Commission.

"We had called a meeting of the mobile service providers and discussed the issue with them,'' he said.

The companies have assured the commission that they would be able to track the origin of an objectionable bulk message in less than 30 minutes.

Gopalaswami said the commission would treat the campaigning through the SMS messages as an offence under the Representation of the Peoples' Act, and observers appointed by the EC would monitor this too.

The practice of using bulk SMS messages and automatic voice messages to win over the voter in the last few hours before the polling began was started by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in the last general elections in 2004.

Gopalaswami today said the commission considers SMS messages a "nuisance" as it was meant to bypass the restrictions on mass campaigning 48 hours before the voting.

During this phase, candidates can only launch a door-to-door canvassing and not hold mass rallies and processions.

Gopalaswami agreed that tech-savvy candidates could work on chain messaging through mobiles to circumvent the commission's ruling. "Innovativeness of human mind is endless,'' he remarked.