EC announces time slot for poll campaign on TV/Radio

New Delhi, Feb 2 (UNI) The Election Commission has announced the time slot allotment for political parties to convey their message to the electorate through AIR and Doordarshan in the three poll-bound northeastern states of Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland.

According to the EC order, the broadcasting and telecasting facilities will be available from the Regional Kendra of the All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan (DD) and in the headquarters of Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland where polling would be held on February 23, March 3 and March 5 respectively.

The commission has kept a base time of 45 minutes for the national and regional parties uniformly on DD and AIR while the additional time to be allotted to the parties had been decided on the basis of their poll performance in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly election in the respective states.

The commission has made this time schedule allotments among 12 parties which include six national parties.

In a single session of broadcast, no party would be allocated more than 15 minutes. The period of broadcast and telecast would end two days before the poll date. However, there will be no telecast or broadcast during the 48 hours preceding the close of polls as per specific provisions of Representation of the People Act, 1951.

The actual date for broadcast and teleast will be decided by the Prasar Bharti Corporation (PBC) in consultation with the Election Commission (EC).

Each eligible political party should nominate one representative for such programme and they will have to submit their transcript and recording in advance.

In Tripura there are seven parties in the race, including six national parties. Of these CPI(M) got the maximum time slot of 240 minutes each for broadcasting as well as for telecasting. This is followed by Congress 125 minutes and INPT--a atate party 65 minutes.

In Meghalaya out of the nine political parties in the fray, six are national parties of which Congress received the highest time slot of 235 minutes while All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) received 115 minutes each.

In Nagaland, of the eight political parties, Nagaland Peoples Party (NPF) bagged the highest time slot of 240 minutes while Congress got 170 minutes followed by BJP (70 minutes), the EC note said.

UNI BKS MSJ ht1657