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The Election Commission has reduced the retention period of video footage and photographs of the polling process to 45 days, citing “recent misuse” of such material, The Indian Express reported on Friday.
In a notice to state chief electoral officers on May 30, the commission stated that videography and photography of polling were not mandated by law but were used as an “internal management tool”, the newspaper reported.
The panel said that the data can be deleted after the 45-day period if no election petition is filed for it, The Indian Express reported. It was referring to petitions filed in courts to challenge the election of a candidate in a poll.
In 2024, the Election Commission had issued instructions laying out timelines, ranging from three months to a year, for storing video footage from stages of the election process, the newspaper reported.
The guidelines mandated that the footage from the pre-nomination period must be retained for three months. Recordings from the nomination stage, campaign period, polling and counting were to be preserved for periods between six months and one year, it had stated.
In its May 30 notice, the poll panel said that the “recent misuse of this content by non-contestants for spreading misinformation and malicious narratives on social media by selective and out-of-context use of such content, which will not lead to any legal outcome, has prompted a review”, The Indian Express reported.
It added: “If no election petition is filed in respect of a particular constituency, then the said data may be destroyed”.
With the new instructions, the time for storing the footage aligns with the 45-day period for filing an election petition, The Indian Express quoted unidentified polling officials as saying.
As first reported by Scroll, the Union government in December amended Rule 93(2)(a) of the rules, which stated that “all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection”.
The amended rule says: “All other papers as specified in these rules relating to the election shall be open to public inspection.”
With this change – notified by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, in consultation with the Election Commission – not all poll-related papers can be inspected by the public. Only those papers specified in the Conduct of Election Rules can be scrutinised.
Courts, too, would also not be able to direct the poll panel to provide all election-related papers for public scrutiny.
The Congress has challenged the change of rules in the Supreme Court.
The December amendment, unidentified Election Commission officials had told The Indian Express, would clarify that electronic footage of the polling process is not covered within the definition of election papers and hence not open to public scrutiny.
Providing security camera footage would amount to the violation of the secrecy of the vote and open it up to potential misuse through the use of artificial intelligence, they were quoted as having argued.
Also read: Election conduct rules amended at lightning speed despite objection by law officers, documents show
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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