Terms of Use

1Who we are, and your agreement with us

Opinion of Punjab (the “Platform”, at opinionofpunjab.com and its sub-domains) is owned and operated by ASSOCIATION FOR CITIZEN DEMOCRACY, a not-for-profit company incorporated in India under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, CIN U73200PB2026NPL069721, registered office C/o S. No. 6, Gill Colony, Kingra, Jalandhar – 144001, Punjab, India (the “Company”, “we”, “us”). These Terms of Use (the “Terms”) and our Privacy Policy govern your use of the Platform.

By using the Platform in any way — reading it, submitting or echoing a Voice, subscribing to the newsletter, or submitting a Stand application — you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the Platform. These Terms are an electronic record under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and need no signature.

You may use the Platform only if you are 18 years of age or older and able to enter into a binding contract under Indian law. We may change these Terms; the date at the top shows the current version, and continued use after a change is acceptance of it.

2What the Platform is, and is not

The Platform lets people in Punjab record opinions about public life (“Voices”), see those opinions collected by place, issue and theme, read compiled public information about elected representatives (the “Tracker”), and register an interest in contesting elections or taking part in civic work (“Stand”, including the Mission 117 programme).

• The Company is not a political party, is not affiliated with any party, candidate, government or the Election Commission of India, does not fund or sponsor candidates, and carries no paid political advertising.
• Nothing on the Platform is legal, electoral, financial or professional advice. Verify anything you intend to rely on with the original source or a qualified adviser.
• A Stand application is an expression of interest only. It is not a nomination, and it creates no promise of selection, support, endorsement, funding or a place on any party’s list. We do not accept money for placement, and we do not put anyone on a party ticket.

3Your Voices and other content you post

You keep ownership of everything you submit. So that we can run the Platform, you grant the Company a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, display, format, translate, excerpt, aggregate and distribute your published content on the Platform, in the Platform’s own summaries and charts, and in preview images generated when a page is shared, for as long as the content is published and for a reasonable period afterwards for backups and records.

You are solely responsible for what you post. By submitting content you confirm that: it is your own or you have the right to post it; anyone identifiable in a photo, video or audio recording has agreed to appear in it; it is not defamatory, unlawful, deceptive or in breach of anyone’s rights; and it complies with section 4. You confirm that any name, place, phone number or other detail you give us is accurate.

Posting anonymously hides your name from other users. It does not make the content private: the Voice, its issue and its district or constituency are still public, and we may still process your connection data as described in the Privacy Policy to prevent abuse and to comply with the law.

4Content rules

You must not post, echo or transmit content that:

• is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, invasive of another person’s privacy, or harmful to a child;
• promotes hatred or violence, or is insulting or harassing on the basis of religion, caste, gender, ethnicity, language, disability or place of origin;
• impersonates any person or body, or misleads about its origin;
• is false or misleading in a way that is likely to cause harm, including about elections, candidates, results or the Platform;
• infringes any copyright, trademark or other right, or discloses another person’s private or personal information without consent;
• breaks any law, including election law, the Model Code of Conduct and restrictions during silence periods, or threatens public order, national security or India’s sovereignty;
• contains malware, spam, bulk or automated submissions, or attempts to interfere with the Platform or other users.

Echo is for people, not scripts: one genuine tap per person. Automated echoing or voting, and any attempt to get around our limits, is prohibited.

5Our role: an intermediary, not the author

For content that users submit, the Company is an intermediary within the meaning of section 2(1)(w) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and claims the protection of section 79 of that Act. We host and display Voices as they are given to us; we are not their author, we do not initiate their transmission, we do not select their recipients, and we do not vouch for their accuracy. A Voice expresses the view of the person who posted it, not the view of the Company.

We are not obliged to review content before it is published, though we may do so. We may, at any time and without notice, hide, edit for format, refuse, restrict or remove any content, and suspend or terminate any user, where we believe in good faith that these Terms or the law have been breached, that a complaint has merit, or that doing so protects the Platform or its users. We will act on lawful orders of courts and government authorities as the law requires.

A “verified” mark means only that a phone number was confirmed by one-time password at the time of posting. It is not a statement that the person, the content or any claim in it has been checked.

6The Tracker: information about public figures

The Tracker compiles information about sitting and former legislators from public records: sworn election affidavits filed with the Election Commission of India (as published by the Commission and by independent archives such as ADR and MyNeta), legislative attendance and question records obtained under the Right to Information Act, 2005, the National e-Vidhan Application, official notifications, and reporting by established news organisations. Each entry states, or links to, the record it relies on.

Public records may contain errors, may be incomplete, or may have been superseded, and the Company does not independently audit every record against its original. Figures and dates are presented as they appear in the cited source. Any score, rating, band, ranking or characterisation on the Tracker is the Company’s own analysis using a stated method; it is an opinion formed honestly from public material on a matter of public interest, not a statement of fact about a person’s character or fitness.

If you are a person covered by the Tracker and believe an entry is inaccurate, outdated or unfair, write to [email protected] with the entry, the correction and any supporting document. We will acknowledge within 24 hours, review within 15 days, and either correct or annotate the entry, remove it, or publish your response alongside it. We may also correct entries on our own initiative.

7Intellectual property and acceptable use

The Platform’s software, design, text, illustrations, compiled datasets, scores and the “Opinion of Punjab” name and marks (including their Punjabi forms) belong to the Company or its licensors and are protected by law. You may share links to the Platform and quote reasonable extracts with attribution. You may not copy, scrape, bulk-download or systematically extract the Platform’s content or databases, reproduce them for commercial purposes, or use them to train automated systems, without our written permission.

You must not probe, disrupt, overload or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Platform, its systems or other users’ data, or misrepresent your identity to us.

8Third-party services

The Platform uses third-party services — for example SMS delivery for verification, email delivery for the newsletter, map tiles, web fonts, file storage and bot protection — and links to external sites and share targets. Those services and sites have their own terms, and we are not responsible for their content, availability or conduct. The Privacy Policy names the providers that handle personal data.

9Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The Platform is provided free of charge, “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Company gives no warranty of any kind, including as to accuracy, completeness, timeliness, fitness for a particular purpose, availability or freedom from error, whether for user content, Tracker content, aggregated views or anything else on the Platform.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Company is not liable to you or to anyone else for any content posted by users, for any decision, action or loss based on anything on the Platform, or for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special or punitive loss, loss of profit, data, reputation or opportunity, however arising. Where liability cannot be excluded, the Company’s total liability to you for all claims in any twelve-month period is limited to ₹5,000.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under Indian law, including liability for fraud or wilful misconduct, or any right you have as a consumer that cannot be waived.

The Company alone is your counterparty. No director, officer, member, employee, contractor or volunteer of the Company has any personal liability to you in connection with the Platform, its content or these Terms, and any claim may be brought only against the Company.

10Your responsibility to us

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Company and its directors, officers, members, employees, contractors and volunteers against all claims, losses, damages, penalties, costs and reasonable legal fees arising from content you post, your breach of these Terms or of any law, or your misuse of the Platform, including any claim by a third party that your content infringed their rights or defamed them.

11Complaints and the Grievance Officer

Under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the Company has designated a Grievance Officer: [Grievance Officer name], reachable at [email protected] and by post at C/o S. No. 6, Gill Colony, Kingra, Jalandhar – 144001, Punjab, India. Any user, or any person affected by content on the Platform, may complain to the Grievance Officer about content or about our handling of it.

We acknowledge complaints within 24 hours and resolve them within 15 days of receipt, and sooner where the Rules require. Please include the link to the content, what is wrong with it, and your contact details. Complaints about personal data are handled under the Privacy Policy.

12General

• Governing law and forum. These Terms are governed by the laws of India. Subject to any non-excludable right to approach a consumer forum, the courts at Jalandhar, Punjab have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute.
• Suspension and closure. We may suspend or end your access, or the Platform itself, at any time. Sections 3, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 12 survive.
• Whole agreement and severability. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and the Company about the Platform. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest continue in force.
• No waiver. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
• Language. These Terms are published in English. Any translation is for convenience, and the English text governs.
• Contact. Opinion of Punjab is owned and operated by ASSOCIATION FOR CITIZEN DEMOCRACY, a not-for-profit company incorporated in India under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013. Write to [email protected] or to the registered office above.