Raj: Poll body finds 3 paid news cases, adds cost incurred to candidates' election expenditure

The Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) has found three cases of paid news and decided to add the money spent on them to the poll expenditure of the candidates concerned, the District Election Officer said Tuesday. The candidates are BJP's Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Ramcharan Bohra and Congress' Krishna Poonia, it said.

While Rathore is the BJP candidate from the Jaipur Rural Lok Sabha seat, Singh is party's nominee from Jaipur. Poonia is the Congress' candidate from Jaipur Rural. The MCMC for the Lok Sabha elections, formed under the District Election Officer (Jaipur), Jagroop Singh Yadav, made the decision in its meeting held here on Monday, a statement issued said.

Yadav said the committee has considered news broadcast on TV channels related to Poonia and Rathore and a news article published in a newspaper related to Bohra as paid news. The committee decided to register the cost of paid news in the election expenditure account of the candidates, he said.