Cambridge Analytica row: ECI to take stock of situation

In a bid to protect the Indian election system following the Cambridge Analytica row, the Election Commission has decided to hold a meeting on March 27, Tuesday.

The meeting would discuss various means to ensure that forces that subvert the electoral process are not successful. There is a need to ensure that the election process is not affected by manipulation on the social media, ECI officials said.

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are at the centre of a controversy over allegations of harvesting and use of personal data of 50 million people on the social media platform to try and influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit vote in the UK.

The ECI would also study the allegations made by the BJP that the Congress party's campaign in the recently held Gujarat elections was managed by CA.

The BJP claims the Congress has also engaged or is in the process of engaging CA for the 2019 polls, and that it used the firm in the Gujarat assembly elections last year.

The Congress, however, countered this claim and said that it was the BJP which had used CA in the past. It said that the BJP had used CA in the Bihar 2010 elections.

OneIndia News