‘Never the practice’: EC reporters not

Thank you all, friends, for joining us today.”

This is how Chandra Bhushan Kumar, senior deputy election commissioner, greeted the media at 6.35 pm on Wednesday – at a press briefing to highlight counting arrangements for the assembly results on Thursday. However, several mainstream media reporters, who cover the election commission as a beat, said they were not invited.

According to reporters, invites to such briefings, even if they are organised at short notice, are usually posted on a WhatsApp group titled "ECI Reporters" – commission spokesperson Sheyphali Sharan is among its administrators. But no such invite came on Wednesday.

Journalists on the group told Newslaundry that their calls and messages asking they were not informed had gone “unanswered”. Newslaundry sent a set of questions to Sheyphali Sharan and this report will be updated once a response is received.

Usually press briefing invites are sent on the ECI WhatsApp group but this time there was no such invite. Only a few media were invited for the press briefing…and the message was sent to [those invited] individually. This has never been the practice,” said Arvind Gunasekar from NDTV.

Talking about invitations, a reporter, who has been on the WhatsApp group for the last few years, said there were two different officers who send WhatsApp messages and emails through the official id. “If the message is sent on the group, then two of them send it separately to reporters also and an email also comes. That’s how releases usually come,” she said. “Today, there was no email, no message on the group, no message separately, no call, nothing. The last email we got was inviting us to the press conference to announce the elections on January 8. There hasn’t been a briefing since then.”