The Government has put forward a proposal to the Election Commission to allow election campaign on private television channels.

In order to impress the poll panel and to bring it around to support the proposal, three secretaries of the Government of India—Law, Legislative Affairs and Information and Broadcasting—met the three members of the Commission.

“We have received the Government’s proposal. We have heard them out. It is for us to draw out of the details on how the party and the candidate can tie-up with private channels for the purpose of election campaign,” high-level sources in the EC said.

The EC will also be deciding whether the expenditure incurred by the political parties for time-slots in private channels would be considered election expenditure of candidates or the party as whole. Government sources said the proposal will be put in place soon enough.

At present, the political parties are confined to time-slots allotted by the EC in the Prasar Bharati-run DD and AIR. That too during peak election time and rigorously monitored by the Commission and its polling personnel.

The proposal also counters the electoral reform package put forward by the EC to clean up the process of elections, from barring persons chargesheeted in heinous crimes to power of deregistering political parties with dubious track records and electoral violations.

The proposal jointly worked out by the Law and I&B Ministry comes close on the heels of another proposal by which the doors to government ads had been opened for private channels. Now, the ministries would not be tied to Doordarshan-All-India Radio but would have the option of putting their ads directly on private channels.