Opinion The Express View on I-T ‘Survey’ of BBC offices: The Daylight Knock

Less than a month ago, the Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting invoked “emergency” powers under the 2021 IT Rules to order online media platforms to take down links sharing the first part of the BBC documentary, India: The Modi Question. On February 14, the Income Tax Department conducted “surveys” at the BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai — the first step in what is widely seen as a process-is-punishment treatment. Officials have alleged that the BBC is “non-compliant” under transfer pricing rules and has “diverted significant” profits. The BBC has said it is “fully co-operating” with authorities and hopes to have this “situation resolved” soon. Of course, the BBC has to answer to the law and has to address whatever questions the tax authorities have. But the parallel commentary by one of the ruling party’s national spokespersons trashing the news organisation as “corrupt” and “rubbish” and accusing it of supporting “anti-national” forces raises more than one question mark on due process. The action against the British media organisation with a global presence has come on the heels of the controversial documentary on the PM which the government has said sows “divisions among various communities, and (makes) unsubstantiated allegations.” Given the recent record of the government vis a vis sections of the media and civil society, the latest action against the BBC — the survey, taken together with the political attack — smacks of bullying and an attempt to intimidate.

Regrettably, this is part of a disquieting pattern. Last September, the tax authorities conducted similar surveys against Oxfam India, think tank Centre for Policy Research — which, incidentally, works with many state governments — and the Independent and Public Spirited Media Foundation (IPSMF). The latter funds multiple digital media entities across political persuasions, some of which have been critical of the government. During those surveys, too, some phones and devices were seized, staff questioned, the inquiries hang fire, the cloud of uncertainty is allowed to hover.

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Surely, Income Tax personnel being sent to a news organisation in the middle of the day is meant to send a message to that organisation and, arguably, it is the message to others, too. It would be simplistic — and inaccurate — to dismiss this as the knee-jerk response of an insecure government. For, this is a government not exactly insecure and it rarely jerks its knee. Herein lies the rub. Asked about such action, the BJP has a stock answer: why worry about a survey or a search if you have nothing to fear? That question is loaded at a time when the IPC is being weaponised at the drop of a police complaint or an FIR, be it the case of a stand-up comic or a professor’s cartoon. The BJP knows that sending tax officers and inspectors to newsrooms and think tanks is borrowing a leaf from a discredited playbook once used by a regime they had so stridently opposed. Surely, they also know that it has its limitations.