Ahead of the Nagaland general election 2023 scheduled on February 27, the Press Information Bureau (PIB), Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, on Saturday organised a workshop on ‘SVEEP and ethics of election reporting’ at Eastgate Hotel in Kohima.
Nagaland’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), V Sashank Shekhar, who attended the programme as chief guest, asserted that media is a medium to reach out to the larger people and expounded the role in conducting free and fair elections.
While expounding the role of the media to spread positive news, he also highlighted some villages in the state that are coming forward to adopt the practices of clean election and had already passed resolutions.
Further, the CEO maintained that all government machinery are now in place for the conduct of free and fair election. In this regard, he has called for collective efforts from various quarters toward this endeavour.
The guest of honour and deputy commissioner of Kohima, Shanavas C, has highlighted on the significance of Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme and stressed on the need for free and fair election.
Pointing out lapses in electoral practices in the state, he called upon the participants and all concerned for introspection and retrospection on what exactly had gone wrong and make a collective effort to address by way of building a culture and education that would disseminate to the public in the absence of transparency and system to address the menace.
Calling upon the media to give constructive criticism, he expressed hope that the media would write positive stories or columns in order to make an impact on the community.
The assistant director of PIB, K Soni Kumar, in his welcome address, informed that the objective of the workshop was to further capacitate the media persons about the various government initiatives. He added that the event was focused on election as the state will go to polls in a month's time.
In the technical session, Asangla Imsong, joint director of DIPR, spoke on “Checking misinformation especially in social media during elections,” while Sharon Longchari, joint CEO, spoke on “Do’s & Don’t of election reporting- An ECI perspective.”