The Chief Electoral Officer, Nagaland has highlighted the issue of pre-certification of political advertisements in print media on the day of the poll and one day prior to the poll citing the ECI letter dated 19 October 2020, wherein the commission has noted instances of offending and misleading advertisements published in print media in the past.

Such advertisements in the last stage of the election vitiate the entire election process. The affected candidates and parties will not have any opportunity of providing clarification/rebuttal in such cases, a DIPR report stated.

In this connection, the ECI has directed that no political party, candidate or any other organisation or person shall publish any advertisement in the print media on the poll day and one day prior to poll day, unless the contents of the advertisement, proposed to be published, are pre-certified from the MCMC committee at the state/district-level.

It is further directed that in order to facilitate the process of pre-certification of the newspaper advertisements and as instructed above, MCMC at the state/district-level be immediately alerted and activated in order to examine and pre-certify all such advertisements received from the political parties, candidates and others, it informed.