Prasar Bharati stands exposed

After initially denying that it had blocked Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar’s Independence Day speech from being put on the air by All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan (DD), Prasar Bharati has finally admitted to having done so with ill grace.
The justification for the unprecedented decision was conveyed to the CM on the eve of Independence Day: “The message of the Chief Minister was closely examined by competent authority. In view of the sanctity of the occasion, the broadcast code and responsibility of the public broadcaster, it is not possible to telecast it in the present format,” a letter from Prasar Bharati’s Delhi headquarters said. Since Sarkar refused to rework the speech, its scheduled airing on Independence Day morning was dropped. In its immediate response to Sarkar’s protest, Doordarshan first sought to wriggle out by claiming that it “gave wide coverage to the chief minister’s Independence Day programme,” before conceding that it had in fact blocked his speech.

The excuses offered by the public broadcaster for the unprecedented decision are lame and untenable in a democratic republic that guarantees freedom of speech in its Constitution. The broadcast code used to justify such a wanton violation of free speech of an elected chief minister is an imprecise and loosely-worded document that has been grossly misused by Prasar Bharati in the past. But the clumsy attempt to censor an elected chief minister from a party that is in the Opposition at the Centre is a gross abuse of its power by the public broadcaster even going by its past record. In arrogating to itself the powers of a censor over an elected chief minister, the public broadcaster has revived serious questions about its mandate and its mythical autonomy from political control.

The fact is that Prasar Bharati was constituted reluctantly seven years after an Act of Parliament was passed in 1990 under the VP Singh government following directions of the Supreme Court in the Union of India vs Cricket Association of Bengal case, where it declared that airwaves were public and not state property. Even after its formation, its autonomy was at best half-formed and its staff report not to the Prasar Bharati board but to the Union government. Under the Narendra Modi government, the situation has not changed much. If the Congress is infamous for imposing Emergency on the nation, the current BJP-led government has time and again shown that it is not far behind in placing restrictions on freedom of speech and expression. Its decision to broadcast live the speech of Mohan Bhagwat, chief of BJP’s parent body RSS had attracted widespread criticism not long ago.