India’s election regulations are increasingly misaligned with the realities of contemporary political campaigning. While electoral laws continue to focus on political parties and candidates as the primary agents of persuasion, modern elections are shaped by platforms, intermediaries, and third-party actors who operate beyond the traditional regulatory frame. This growing mismatch was starkly visible during the Bihar Assembly elections, exposing serious gaps in how digital political influence is governed.
Why the Bihar election became a warning sign
The disconnect came into focus with a press note issued by the on October 14, mandating pre-certification of political advertisements by the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC). It also reiterated the requirement under Section 77(1) of the for political parties to disclose social media campaign expenditure.
At first glance, these measures appeared responsive to the digital turn in elections. Yet, their underlying logic remained rooted in an older campaign model—one that assumes parties and candidates are the sole drivers of political messaging.
A regulatory lens fixed on the wrong actors
What unites the EC’s directives is their narrow focus on formally recognised stakeholders. Electoral communication today is increasingly mediated by campaign firms, influencers, advocacy groups, and other third-party actors who shape narratives without contesting elections themselves.
A subsequent EC notification on October 21 attempted to widen the scope by restricting political advertisements by any party, candidate, organisation, or individual in print media on polling day and the preceding day without MCMC approval. While this acknowledged the presence of non-party actors, it also highlighted the limits of regulatory imagination. The restriction was confined to print media and applied only to a narrow temporal window, even as electoral persuasion has decisively migrated to digital platforms and peaks well before polling day.
Who pays and who persuades in digital elections
An examination of digital advertising during the Bihar Assembly elections illustrates how far reality has moved ahead of regulation. Using data from Meta’s Ads Library, political advertisements by advertisers spending more than ₹1 lakh in Bihar during the final 30 days before polling were analysed.
Out of 55 major digital campaigners nationally during this period, only 23 were official party or candidate pages. The remaining 32 were third-party or surrogate actors. Despite comparable average spending, third-party advertisers generated nearly double the impressions of official party and candidate pages. This indicates that in digital elections, influence is shaped as much by who communicates as by how much is spent.
The demographic patterns reinforce this shift. While both official and third-party advertisements were primarily consumed by voters aged 13–34, third-party campaigns showed a broader age spread, retaining significant visibility among those aged 25–44 and even beyond. Digital persuasion, therefore, appears more diffuse and less party-centric than electoral law assumes.
The efficiency gap and unequal communicative power
When campaign efficiency is measured—impressions generated per ₹10 lakh spent—the imbalance becomes sharper. Third-party advertisers generated substantially higher impressions per unit of spending than parties or candidates. This reveals an unequal distribution of communicative power in online elections, where comparable expenditure yields vastly different levels of reach depending on the actor involved.
Such asymmetries challenge the foundational assumption of election law: that regulating party and candidate expenditure is sufficient to ensure a level playing field.
The opaque nexus between parties and third parties
More troubling is evidence of direct financial entanglement between political parties and third-party actors. In some cases, advertisements on official party pages were paid for by external entities. For example, advertisements on the official Meta page of the were sponsored by a third-party entity identified as “The Spectrum”.
This arrangement raises serious accountability concerns. Expenditure incurred by third parties to fund advertisements on official party platforms may not appear in the expenditure statements submitted to the EC, leading to systematic underreporting of digital campaign spending. Influence, in such cases, does not merely flow from parties to intermediaries; it flows back as well, blurring the line between authorised expenditure and unaccounted political financing.
Legal principles versus regulatory practice
The Supreme Court, in Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting v. M/s Gemini TV (2004), held that no individual or entity may publish advertisements for the benefit of a political party or candidate. By implication, advertisements against a party or candidate are equally impermissible, as they benefit electoral competitors.
Yet, the EC’s guidelines during the Bihar elections failed to operationalise this principle in the digital sphere. Many third-party actors continued campaigning even on polling day and the preceding evening, effectively bypassing restrictions that applied strictly to parties and candidates.
Campaign finance and the invisibility of influence
The accountability gap is further widened by how digital expenditure is disclosed. While parties must submit expenditure statements to the EC, digital spending is often reported under generic platform labels such as “Facebook”, without identifying the entities that designed or funded the advertisements.
Even more problematic is the reverse flow of funds—where third parties pay for advertisements on official party pages. Parties are legally required to report what they spend, not what others spend on their behalf. This inversion allows significant political influence to remain formally invisible, undermining transparency and electoral fairness.
Why timing matters in digital regulation
Finally, the temporal design of election regulation is increasingly ineffective. Digital influence builds cumulatively over months through sustained exposure, data-driven targeting, and narrative reinforcement. Rules that activate only in the final days before polling are incapable of addressing harms that have already taken root.
Each election conducted under this outdated framework carries long-term costs, including the erosion of public trust in the integrity of electoral competition.
What to note for Prelims?
- Role of the Election Commission and MCMC in regulating political advertisements.
- Section 77 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
- Supreme Court ruling in Gemini TV case (2004).
What to note for Mains?
- Challenges of regulating digital political campaigns in India.
- Role of third-party actors and platforms in shaping electoral influence.
- Need for reforming campaign finance and disclosure norms in the digital age.
