Ghaziabad police have arrested Shekhar Tripathi, the online editor of Dainik Jagran, after the newspaper published exit-polls for the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections, said a report in The Hindu’s website.
A report in The Hindu said the action came after the Election Commission ordered District Election Officers (DEOs) in 15 districts of UP to file cases against the editors at the newspaper for running the exit poll on the first phase of the UP elections last week.
On February 11, the day polling happened in Uttar Pradesh’s first phase of elections, Jagran is said to have put out the results of an exit poll on its website at 7:30 p.m. After the media reported that the poll was a violation of the EC’s poll code, it was taken down. The agency that had conducted it said that it had taken the views of 5,700 people across 38 constituencies.
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Earlier, the company that is purported to have conducted the exit poll denied doing so. The EC had ordered the lodging of an FIR against the company for carrying out an exit poll in Uttar Pradesh despite a ban. It claimed today that it has been wrongly accused, causing it an "unnecessary loss of face".
When contacted, the Election Commission refused to come on record and a senior official, who declined to be named, said the election body went by a media report and "it is up to the police to investigate".
A day after the EC ordered lodging of FIRs against the second highest circulated newspaper in the country and the agency, Resource Development International India Pvt Ltd, in connection with publication of "exit polls" in violation of its directions, the company's Managing Director Rajeev Gupta said his firm has nothing to do with exit polls.
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Gupta said his organisation is a management consulting company engaged in strategic consulting and is in no way involved in poll-related activities like exit polls.
Tripathi, the online editor at the newspaper is said to have been arrested on Monday night.
With PTI Inputs
