/CORRECTED REPEAT/INDIA: Amid Mudslinging, Calls Rise for Decency in Poll

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 6 2004 (IPS) - The campaign for India’s general elections, set to begin later this month, has turned steamy enough for the Supreme Court to warn contesting parties to stay within the limits of decency or risk disqualification.

”We want fair play and not slanderous remarks by one party against the other or the leader of party against that of another. This is not democracy,” a three-member bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice V N Khare said this week.

Hinting sternly at possible disqualification, the court said: ”If there is political mudslinging, we will make it an electoral offence.”

Monday’s was the latest in a series of hearings by the Supreme Court on the issue of ‘surrogate advertisements’ in which Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and opposition leader Sonia Gandhi were personally targeted in political advertisements aired in some of India’s 83 private television channels.

In four-stage parliamentary elections staggered between Apr. 20 and May 10, the right-wing, pro-Hindu BJP is trying to seek reelection for another five-year term. A series of new state assemblies are also being elected.

For instance, one advertisement tries to get at the right-wing character of Vajpayee’s BJP and his ties to groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an ultra-nationalist organisation that is often accused of fascism and is known for its military-style drills.

On Friday when the apex court banned such advertisements, both Vajpayee’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Gandhi’s Congress party welcomed the order. ”We have always advocated that the campaign should be based on programmes, policies and achievements,” said BJP spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

Despite Naqvi’s late assertions, BJP’s managers have relentlessly steered the campaign in the direction of a personality clash between veteran leader Vajpayee while constantly focusing on Gandhi’s Italian birth.

But the BJP soon found itself running for cover. Advertisements began to appear showing Vajpayee as a collaborator of the British colonials during India’s freedom movement – for which the Congress party can legitimately and almost exclusively take credit.

In fact, it was the BJP-led government that approached the Supreme Court seeking a ban on mudslinging on private television channels and in some cases by the operators of cable television.

On Monday, Vajpayee was compelled to defend himself at a public rally in his constituency of Lucknow in northern Uttar Pradesh state and declare that he had never been an ”informer” of the British rulers.

Newspapers have meantime been cautious in describing the advertisements, especially now that the issue is before the high court.

The Supreme Court has given the Election Commission until Thursday to frame broad guidelines on what constitutes political mudslinging and has offered to help the statutory body in monitoring the content of private television channels.

Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishna Murthy earlier expressed helplessness in reining in political parties, especially since he is armed solely with an idealistic but toothless ‘model code of conduct’ that does not carry the force of law.

The code is founded on three principles: secular fairness that stops appeals to religion, unfair advantage through the abuse of money and muscle power and personal fairness that avoids personal attacks and invective.

But all these principles have been sorely tested in campaigning for the present election.

Earlier, the Supreme Court upheld an entry ban imposed by the local administration of Mangalore city in southern Karnataka on Pravin Togadia, the fiery leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or World Hindu Forum, an affiliate of the BJP.

”Communal harmony should not be made to suffer and be made dependent upon the will of an individual or a group of individuals, whatever be their religion, be it of the majority or the minority,” the court observed in a ruling on Mar. 30

The court went on to explain that secularism meant that ”the state should have no religion of its own and no one should proclaim to make the state have one or endeavour to create a theocratic state”.

”Religion cannot be mixed with secular activities of the state and fundamentalism of any kind cannot be permitted to masquerade as political philosophies to the detriment of the larger interest of society and the basic requirement of a welfare state,” the court observed.

As for money and muscle power, the effectiveness of the model code of conduct is openly and visibly violated by the sheer flamboyance of the electioneering. So far, the campaign has involved the use of chartered airplanes and helicopters, the hiring of high-profile film personalities and costly advertisements that clearly exceed stipulated spending limits.

And now, the Election Commission is further daunted by the task of having to monitor the content of India’s 83 private television channels, which are beamed into homes through some 33,000 cable operators. Audiences are being virtually inundated with content coming in from six national parties and 45 regional ones.

Cable operators are already bound by rules making them liable for showing advertisements which ”offend morality, decency and religious susceptibility of viewers”, but exactly where the line must be drawn has yet to be defined.

Commented ‘The Hindu’ newspaper in an editorial Monday: ”In assessing political advertisements, the (Election) Commission will need to maintain a fine balance between the need for free political expression and the necessity to curb the politics of smear and defamation.”

According to the constitutional expert and Supreme Court advocate Rajeev Dhavan, the issue at hand is one of discipline. There has to be a ”minimal respect for the ground rules that make free and fair elections possible,” he argued.

”The Elections Commission is not a schoolmaster but it is forced to be one. Parties and candidates have lost their sense of discipline,” Dhavan said.