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Journalism of Courage
After Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Parliament Wednesday, the Opposition charged that Sansad TV, which is the only parliamentary channel of India, focused on Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla for “71 per cent of the time” during Rahul’s speech on the Manipur violence during Day 2 of the debate on the no-confidence motion.
On Thursday, a team of Congress MPs wrote to the Speaker, expressing their “concern and condemnation” against the broadcaster and said it behaved in a “shamefully partisan manner”.
They referred to an incident in Parliament Tuesday, when tickers listing government programmes were run while the Opposition spoke. They added, “We are grateful that you (Birla) had stopped it when it was pointed out, but it should never have occurred.”
They also said the camera “lingered inordinately on the Chair and on the treasury Benches,” focusing on Rahul’s face for only 11 minutes out of the 37 minutes he spoke.
The BJP has been emphasising that it did not have any control on the broadcaster. Speaking to news agency ANI on comments of Rahul’s Wednesday’s comments being expunged, Union Parliamentary Affairs minister Pralhad Joshi said that Sansad TV was not under the Speaker’s control or the BJP’s control. He added that expunging “unparliamentary” content was an old practice.
Sansad Television was launched on September 15, 2021, by merging Lok Sabha Television (LSTV) and Rajya Sabha Television (RSTV) — two separate dedicated satellite channels.
LSTV, the older of the two, was the brainchild of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, and started operating on July 24, 2006.
The first telecast of Parliament proceedings began on December 20, 1989, when select parliamentary proceedings were televised. Then, starting April 18, 1994, the entire proceedings of Lok Sabha started to be filmed. In August that year, a Low Power Transmitter (LPT) was set up and made operational in Parliament House to telecast the proceedings live. From December 1994, Question Hour in both Houses was telecast live on alternate weeks on Doordarshan.
When DD News channel was launched, Question Hour in both Houses started getting telecast simultaneously on DD channels.
But it was only after a decade, in December 2004, that a separate dedicated satellite channel was set up for the live telecast of the proceedings of both Houses. In 2006, LSTV started airing the proceedings of the Lower House live. RSTV was launched in 2011.
Apart from telecasting the live proceedings of the Lower House and the Upper House of Indian Parliament, Sansad Television is “committed to objectively presenting the various facets of vibrant democracy,” says a Lok Sabha handbook on the broadcaster.
The Opposition has, however, time and again alleged that the TV channel is not objective. They have argued that the channel focuses on the government benches while the Opposition is speaking.
On August 2, Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale wrote to the CEO of Sansad TV, Rajit Punjhani, on the matter. In a tweet accompanying his letter, Gokhale said, “A shocking thing I’ve noticed through this current Parliament session is how state-owned @sansad_tv indulges in a devious censorship when broadcasting proceedings of Rajya Sabha. The channel brazenly & exclusively focusses on the Treasury/Govt benches while completely blacking out any footage of the Opposition benches during the session.”
In an opinion piece for The Indian Express, TMC MP Derek O Brien, on March 23 wrote that the pictures from Sansad TV “are being selectively edited online before telecast”. “Protests by Opposition MPs are rarely, if ever, shown. The edited video output ensures the focus is on the Speaker, Chairperson and the Treasury Benches. Visuals of Opposition MPs protesting from their seats or in the well of the House are censored. Sansad TV is not the only culprit,” he wrote.
On August 6, 2021, during the Monsoon Session of Parliament then, when the contentious Pegasus and farm laws were being discussed, MP Manish Tewari alleged the footage shown within the House and that to viewers was entirely different. “This is the height of Censorship. Lok Sabha TV cameras show one thing inside the house on giant TV screens in the Chamber and absolutely another thing on the Lok Sabha TV Channel. As Former Union I&B Minister it is preposterous the way a supposedly autonomous institution is behaving,” he wrote on Twitter.
In another incident, when the audio feed of Rajya Sabha TV was disrupted briefly during the passage of the three farm Bills (later withdrawn) in September 2020, the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), which maintains the Parliament Building, blamed it on the damage caused to microphones at the Chairman’s seat by some MPs.
