Surrogate ads: EC won’t oblige, so Centre ropes in SC

Amid fears of an unabated war of political advertisements on TV, the NDA Government today hastened to put the lid on them and appealed to th...

Amid fears of an unabated war of political advertisements on TV, the NDA Government today hastened to put the lid on them and appealed to the Supreme Court to intervene and stay the Andhra Pradesh High Court decision allowing their telecast.

This is a departure from the stand it originally took of not challenging the March 23 high court order and leaving it to the Election Commission to regulate the telecast of political ads under the model code of conduct. The Government’s special leave petition (SLP) followed the EC’s refusal to exercise jurisdiction over those advertisements.

The Government challenged the high court order broadly on three grounds:

• Political ads on TV will have ‘‘a deep and immediate impact’’ on the public mind.

• Large budgets involved in TV ads. Therefore, moneybags will be able to ‘‘thwart’’ and ‘‘make a mockery’’ of the democratic process.

• Use of money power in that manner will distort the level playing field.

In seeking the apex court’s help, the Government has stated that the rationale for banning the telecast of political ads under Rule 7 (3) of the Cable Networks Regulation Act, 1995, was aimed at misuse of the media by moneybags and prevent distortion in the level of political debates. The Government has named the EC, the state of Andhra Pradesh, Chief Electoral Officer (Andhra Pradesh Secretariat), Joint Chief Electoral Officer (Andhra Pradesh Government), District Election Officer, Gemini TV and P. Kiran as respondents.

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The decision to appeal against the high court order comes in the wake of a high-level meeting called by Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee yesterday where concern was expressed at the contents of ads aired by his party and the Opposition Congress party.

In the past two weeks, both the national parties have engaged in a surrogate warfare targeting the weakness of the other.

Last week, when the EC drew the attention of the I&B Ministry to the ads, the latter had pleaded it was not within the provision of the programme and advertising code of the Cable Networks Regulation Act of 1995. Clause 7 (3), that deals with political campaigns, under which the Government could have acted, was struck down by the Andhra Pradesh High Court, the ministry pointed out.

The ministry asked the EC to consider the use of the model code of conduct of elections.