Editorial Policy

1. Who we are

Bhopal.info is a privately operated hyperlocal digital platform for the city of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is operated by Bhopal City Information Portal. The platform publishes news, city information, event listings, business directories, and civic utility content relevant to Bhopal and its residents.

Our editorial operations are overseen by our designated Editor and Grievance Officer: Rajnish K. Khare. All editorial enquiries, complaints, and correction requests must be directed to the contact details provided in Section 8 below.

2. Editorial independence

Bhopal.info maintains strict editorial independence. Our reporting, content selection, and editorial decisions are not influenced by:

• Advertisers or commercial sponsors
• Government agencies or political entities
• Business listings or directory partners on our platform
• Any external funding sources, grants, or institutional affiliations

No advertiser or sponsor has any right to review, approve, or request changes to editorial content before or after publication. Paid content, when published, is clearly labelled as Sponsored or Advertorial and is visually distinct from editorial content.

This platform is not a government portal. It is not affiliated with, funded by, or representative of any government authority, civic body, or public institution.

3. Content standards

All content published on Bhopal.info must meet the following standards:

• Accuracy: Information must be factually verifiable. We do not publish rumours, unverified claims, or speculation presented as fact.
• Fairness: Where multiple viewpoints exist on a matter, we strive to represent them fairly. We do not take editorial sides on political, communal, or divisive issues.
• Relevance: Content must be relevant to Bhopal and its residents. We do not publish clickbait, sensationalist headlines, or content designed to generate fear or panic.
• Responsibility: We follow the guidelines on crime and incident reporting set out in our Platform Architecture. Graphic content, identity of victims, and content that could endanger individuals is never published.
• Attribution: Sources are credited wherever they contribute information. Wire content, press releases, and third-party sources are identified as such.
• Language: We publish in English and Hindi. Content must be written clearly and accessibly. Mixed-language (Hinglish) content is accepted where it serves reader comprehension.

4. AI-assisted content — disclosure

Bhopal.info uses artificial intelligence tools as part of its content pipeline. We believe in full transparency about how AI is used in our editorial process.

What AI is used for

• News aggregation and rewriting: We use automated pipelines to fetch news summaries from public news APIs (including GNews and government press release sources such as Jansampark MP). These summaries are rewritten using AI language models (Google Gemini as primary; Groq/Llama as fallback) to produce readable, locally relevant articles.
• Translation: Hindi-language government press content is translated to English using AI assistance.
• Content categorisation and tagging: AI assists in classifying content by category and geographic area.
• Image sourcing: Where no source image is available, AI-assisted search is used to find relevant stock imagery from licensed providers (Unsplash).

What AI is not used for

• AI does not fabricate, invent, or hallucinate facts. Our pipeline includes explicit instructions against inventing names, places, figures, or events not present in the source material.
• AI does not replace human editorial judgement. All AI-generated content is subject to editorial review before publication.
• AI does not make decisions on content suppression, correction, or complaint handling. These are handled by our editorial team.

Identification of AI-assisted content

Articles produced through our AI-assisted pipeline carry an author attribution or source note indicating their origin. Articles based on government press releases are tagged with their source. We are committed to expanding these disclosure labels as our content operations grow.

We comply with emerging AI content disclosure norms under applicable guidelines and will update this section as regulatory requirements evolve in India.

5. What we will never publish

• Fabricated or fictitious news
• Content promoting communal disharmony, hate speech, or violence
• Unverified rumours presented as news
• Graphic or disturbing content including crime scene imagery
• Content that identifies victims of crimes, accidents, or sensitive incidents
• Political propaganda or partisan editorial content
• Misleading health or medical claims
• Content that violates the privacy of private individuals

6. Correction policy

We are committed to correcting errors promptly and transparently.

• Minor corrections (spelling, grammar, formatting) are made silently without a correction notice.
• Factual corrections (incorrect data, misidentification, wrong date or figure) are corrected with a dated correction note appended to the article: "Correction: [original error] has been corrected to [correct information]. Corrected on [date]."
• Significant errors that affect the substance of a story may result in the article being retracted and replaced with a notice explaining the retraction.
• We do not delete articles to suppress errors. Errors are corrected in place with transparency.

To request a correction, use the contact details in Section 8. We acknowledge correction requests within 48 hours and resolve them within 7 working days.

7. User-generated and listing content

Bhopal.info hosts user-submitted content including business listings, event postings, job listings, property listings, and classifieds. This content is not produced by our editorial team. We moderate all submissions for compliance with our platform policies before publication.

User-submitted content does not reflect the editorial views of Bhopal.info. We reserve the right to remove content that violates our policies without notice. Moderation decisions can be appealed by contacting us at the address below.

8. Contact and complaints

For editorial complaints, correction requests, or concerns about published content, please contact:

9. Regulatory compliance

Bhopal.info operates in compliance with applicable Indian law including the Information Technology Act, 2000; the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021; the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023; and other applicable statutes. Our Grievance Officer is designated as required under Rule 3(2)(b) of the IT Intermediary Rules, 2021.

We have applied for membership with recognised self-regulatory bodies for digital news publishers. Updates on membership status will be reflected on our About page.

10. Policy updates

This editorial policy is reviewed periodically. Material changes will be announced on the platform. The date of last update is shown at the top of this page. Continued use of the platform following a policy update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.