Facebook, for the first time globally, is embarking on a strictly offline process to verify identity and locations of political advertisers in India ahead of the country’s general elections next year.The social network, which counts India as the largest market by users, has written an email on December 8 to individual advertisers and agencies that they must provide scanned copies of address and identify proofs, which will be verified with visits by its India-based team.Alternatively, advertisers could opt for Facebook to send a verification code by post, akin to what it did in the US during the recent mid-term elections. This is for the first time that the social network would be adopting a “feet on the street” approach, owing to the unique challenges India represents as a political advertising market.The process could take “weeks” to complete, Facebook said in the mail reviewed by ET. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the offline move.“We are committed to maintaining elections integrity and this is something we take very seriously. We have been adding to our capabilities and defenses over the last few months and have done a lot of work to prevent interference and protect the integrity of elections.We have updated our policies to require more thorough documentation from advertisers who want to run election-related ads on the platform," said a Facebook spokesperson in an email comment.This move by the American company comes at a time when political parties, after the recent state assembly elections, are plotting their digital strategies for the general elections to be held sometime in April-May 2019. Facebook is expected to play an important role for those in the fray, with India accounting for nearly 300 million users (294 million), according to online statistics portal, Statista India is the latest country after the US, Brazil and UK where Facebook is tightening the authorisation process for political advertisers on the platform.These efforts are also a response to increasing demands by countries worldwide for fool-proof systems that prevent misuse of the social network during elections.Such demands have grown more stentorian in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal –when it was revealed that personal data of some 87 million Facebook users, including that of Indian users was "improperly shared" with the British political consultancy firm. The American company has also been badly hit by charges of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections, primarily through the Facebook platform."As part of the election integrity efforts, we had shared a 'Facebook Cyber Security Guide for Politicians and Political Parties', to protect and safeguard the integrity of the electoral process in India by ensuring that the accounts of politicians and political parties are secure and that people have access to reliable information and diverse perspectives. The guide was shared with 850+ policy makers that included all Indian Parliamentarians, Chief Ministers of different states and all Chief Electoral Officer's appointed by Election Commission of India ," the Facebook spokesperson said.Facebook is now tasked with safeguarding India’s elections from potential interference on its platform while also chasing business goals, which is to earn billions of dollars through targeted advertising.“The cost (of verification) would be peanuts for Facebook, assuming that verification in India costs approximately Rs 100 per address. Especially, if you consider that the maximum market size of political advertisers in India thus far, is around 20000,” said a digital strategist with a political party.While these efforts represent significant progress in ensuring ad transparency ahead of the elections, concerns remain. For a start, those in the ecosystem feel, it may not be foolproof, and there could be workarounds that political parties and candidates could resort to.Primarily through proxy advertising i.e. getting someone else to advertise on their behalf. While the candidate might have an official page on Facebook, the person might resort to proxy ads on unofficial or “fan” pages, which might foot the bills.This was seen during the mid-term elections in the United States, when Vice News , a media publication bought ads on behalf of top senators and even US vice-president Mike Pence in October. In a subsequent story, Vice wrote that “Facebook knew who was behind the ads internally, but externally, Facebook users would see was completely made up Paid for information.”This phenomenon could follow suit in India, warn experts. “It will bring a mad rush to find third-party proxies who have applied for authorisation. The side effect is that this move could result in propping up of agencies and companies with obscure names, billing addresses and credit cards, which will be hard to trace for Facebook or even the Election Commission for that matter,” says a New Delhi-based public policy consultant, who declined to be named.The other bone of contention could come from Facebook exempting eligible news publishers from authorisation. This assumes significance as political parties and individual members of parliament have interests in media.“This is a significant loophole, and Facebook should have ensured this because now, these news publishers could act as a proxy for their owners—political parties, or individual MPs,” said the digital strategist cited above.