O.P. RawatPTI  

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) O.P. Rawat said here on Saturday that the present set of laws was “inadequate” to tackle the menace of black money in elections, and noted that Cambridge Analytica-like “machinations” of data theft, data harvesting and fake news posed a potent threat to the electoral process in the country.

Mr. Rawat, speaking on “Challenges to India electoral democracy” at a symposium, said democracy did not run on whims and it required traits such as courage, character, integrity and knowledge that were diminishing and were on the “verge of extinction” in the country.

The CEC said clean elections were like a “wellspring of legitimacy” for the leadership, and the people of the country and if this was contaminated by such issues, the common man became “cynical” about the entire system, which was an area of concern.

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