Government ads: How non BJP ruled states are the biggest losers
The Supreme Court has banned government advertisements from carrying pictures of anyone but the President, the Chief Justice of India and the Prime Minister. This has received applause from the general public who believed that politicians garnered undue publicity at the cost of the public exchequer. Now consider the consequences for state governments where not even the chief ministers will be allowed publicity with public money. Especially those from parties other than the one ruling at the Centre.
For example, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s smiling mug, the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh can bask in that reflected glory, but the Congress government in Karnataka has no option of getting publicity for state government scheme advertisements.
However strange it may sound, it is a BJP-ruled state that has opposed the order. The BJP government in Rajasthan may file a review petition against the judgment. Though no opposition-ruled state has officially come forward to oppose Wednesday’s verdict of the apex court, they feel they are the biggest losers.
The Congress has often alleged that the NDA government’s decision-making has got centralised under Modi. Former union minister Arun Shourie had accused the troika of Modi, finance minister Arun Jaitley and BJP president Amit Shah of running the show in the government and the party. So, it will be Modi all the way in the government ads that go out from any central ministry. Even the allies lose out in the sense that Ram Vilas Paswan can no longer use his ministry’s publicity budget for his own.
The Congress-ruled states will obviously avoid using Modi’s photograph, lest the credit for any scheme or project goes to him. They cannot use the photographs of party president Sonia Gandhi or Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi. They can use the photographs of only departed leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi.
However, they still have an option of promoting their schemes through the picture of President Pranab Mukherjee who was a veteran Congress leader and former union minister. He held the Finance portfolio before ascending to the president’s post. But that will be taking it too far and there’s a possibility the president himself may not approve of it.
But what about the non-BJP or non-Congress-ruled states? For instance, Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal, which, in most likelihood, will not use Modi’s photograph. Regarding the president, chief minister Mamata Banerjee is not known to have enjoyed cordial relations with him in the recent past. She had attempted to prop up APJ Abdul Kalam as a candidate against Mukherjee who was fielded by the Congress. In such a scenario, West Bengal’s only option might be to fall back upon the picture of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.
When this correspondent spoke to senior persons running governments in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, they didn’t want to be named but made it clear they were unhappy about the Supreme Court’s decision. They will take some time before “studying” the judgment and deciding their next course of action.
Even though the DMK is not in power in Tamil Nadu, former chief minister M Karunanidhi has slammed the Supreme Court ban, saying it takes away the rights of the states. According to him, the PM and CMs are of the same status in a federal set-up and in states, people give more importance to the CMs than the PM, he said. He added that a picture of a CM is inevitable in state government advertisements. “There are few educated people. The pictures help people understand ads better,” he said.
The Aam Aadmi Party-ruled Delhi has decided to comply with the court order and pull down government-sponsored billboards with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s photographs. But if you have watched news channels today, you could see Kejriwal himself waxing eloquent on his anti-corruption drive in Delhi.
But, as is their wont, the politicians have already started finding loopholes in the judgment to circumvent the ban. “After the ban on advertising of liquors, haven’t the companies circumvented the law by publicising sodas and mineral water?” one of them said.
He said chances are being explored of getting corporates or private persons sponsor the advertisements of government programmes and having pictures of any leader included in them. This would be another kind of ‘jugaad’ to promote personality cult, which the Supreme Court has tried to put a check on.