Backstory | Note How the Machiavellian Media Cheers Loudly as Elections Are Stolen

The mainstream media’s affection for the ruling party is a many-layered thing – and certainly one of the layers is the financial reward that flows seamlessly to the proprietors of media houses. But must this amorous relationship extend to unqualified support for the perfidy that has become the hallmark of the ruling party’s drive to wrest for itself everlasting and uninterrupted political power?

Overturning the popular vote through money-fuelled, behind-the-scenes, machinations must surely be considered nothing less than running a bulldozer through the three pillars of Indian democracy, even for incorrigible crawlers? Match fixing in cricket has been severely condemned by the media, time and again, so why is this permanent forbearance extended to the ruling party to steal, snatch, stitch together electoral victories based on a foundation of bribery, lies and sleight of hand? Is this unadulterated media glee, for what has been euphemistically termed as ‘Operation Lotus’ (Operation Loot-Us would perhaps have been a more apt moniker), actually encouraging more predatory expeditions of this kind? What is the cumulative impact of such undisguised media admiration for stealing elections on political and public morality in this country?

Of course, it is true that all the world loves a winner. Mediapersons know their Chanakya and their Machiavelli well, they understand the wisdom that political parties should never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception. They cannot but be persuaded by the likes of Jaiveer Shergill, graduate in law from a swish US law school who also graduated from being a Congress spokesperson to a BJP one in the blink of an eye. He recently tweeted: “BJP knows how to win a losing battle & Congress knows how to lose a winning battle! That’s the difference !!”  (Haha, Mr Shergill, hope you get rewarded for your wit with a RS nomination in the not too distant future!)

Two developments over the last few weeks demonstrated this with sharp clarity: the mayoral election to the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation of January 30 and, almost a month later, the Rajya Sabha elections and its fallout in the Himachal Pradesh assembly.

The mayoral poll for Chandigarh could not have been more clearly and unequivocally fraudulent and it played out in full public view. Although the media were kept out of the hall where the election was being conducted, a large screen had been thoughtfully installed to ensure that newspersons could follow the developments live. Everybody got to see the Returning Office Anil Masih scribbling away on eight ballot papers that had gone in favour of the AAP-Congress alliance. These, he went on to claim later, were defaced and therefore invalid. Immediately after this, the BJP’s candidate, Manoj Sonkar, was declared victorious, had ladoos stuffed into his mouth and before long was eased into the mayoral chair with party colleagues, including the BJP Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher, signaling ‘V’ for victory signs and applauding from the sidelines.

Everybody, including mediapersons, knew that the BJP had 14 councillors in the 35-member Municipal Corporation, while AAP-Congress coalition could marshal 20 (AAP 13 and Congress 7). Everybody, including mediapersons, knew that the presiding officer, Masih, is the general secretary of the BJP’s minority cell. Yet, apart from a handful of newspapers which raised serious questions on the manner in which the election was conducted, most from the media preferred to keep their eyes wide shut on the less than scrupulous manner in which Sonkar was pronounced as victorious.

The Times of India report was headlined: ‘BJP wins Chandigarh mayor poll as 8 INDIA votes invalidated’. The report alluded to allegations of “fraud, forgery” and “sedition” being made, but did not go out of its way to confirm this although gathering such evidence should really not have occasioned much effort. Others were even more blatant. India TV, in its web report headlined ‘Chandigarh mayoral polls: BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar wins post of mayor, I.N.D.I.A. bloc fails’, did not even bother to mention the invalidated ballots. Zee News found it difficult to avoid mentioning the allegations but nevertheless bravely shouted out loud and clear that ‘BJP Dominates Chandigarh Mayor Election with 16 Votes’. AAJ Tak crowed: ‘Chandigarh Mayor Chunav: 13 Plus 7 Minus 8…Aur Jeet Gayi BJP, Aise Bhigad Gaya Congress-AAP ka Game’. Its coverage was full of “analyses” on how the BJP had swung the votes.

The joint effort of scribes and anchors was to seize the opportunity to higlight the ineffectuality of the INDIA alliance. Republic TV predictably went out of its way to pour scorn on every claim that the poll was rigged. Its headline said it all: ‘Defeated Indi Accuses BJP of “Cheating” In Chandigarh’. Its prime time exposition bowled several googlies at the INDIA Bloc: ‘Can Indi bounce back from this debacle?’ ‘Indi Fails Litmus Test’, ‘Indi’s local failure to hit 2024 Goals?’ and so on.

Few publications ventured to question the blatant subversion of the electoral process. There was, fortunately, the odd one like Frontline, which in its January 31 report pulled no punches: ‘Democracy on edge as BJP steals Chandigarh election from Congress-AAP alliance’. It also drew attention to the fact that this perverted election process raised concerns about Indian democracy and the coming general election.

We saw a near repeat of this scenario during the BJP’s manoeuvres to engineer what has come to be known, rather ungrammatically, as “cross voting” in the Rajya Sabha polls  (one doesn’t vote, one “cross-votes”!). Consider again how The Times of India applauded the goings-on through the use of selective information and curated words. Its February 28 headline read: “BJP snatches RS wins in UP, HP; Himachal CM in trouble”. Words like “snatch”, “stunned”, jumped out of the report, reflecting a little concealed glee over the developments, along with expressions like “smug ineptness of rivals” or “pushing Congress’s govt in Himachal into the throes of a life-threatening crisis three days before the state budget is to be presented”.

What was a naked display of money power on the part of the BJP, with the full muscle of the central government at play, was framed as “ambushes” that dealt “another psychological blow to the opposition”. Striking, too, was the way the same newspaper was quick to fault the Congress for its “weakening oversight of states” but had not a word on what seemed highly dubious means employed by the BJP to gain the Himachal Rajya Sabha seat. It is as if the Congress was simply imploding of its own volition with no external factors creating the conditions necessary for such an “implosion”.

Television news is absolutely blatant in its genuflection to the ruling party and prime minister. The trouble the print correspondents of Big Media is that they would like to appear as independent-minded, thinking, analytical women and men, but scratch them and they are all shown to be equally deferential to the power brokers setting the news agenda!

It needed the Supreme Court to firmly call out charades like these. In its verdict of February 20 on the Chandigarh mayoral fraud, the apex court observed: “We are of the considered view that in such a case, this Court is duty-bound…to do complete justice to ensure that the process of electoral democracy is not allowed to be thwarted by such subterfuges.”

Question is, are not the media similarly duty-bound?

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Third anniversary of the IT Rules

Three years have passed since then Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, along with the then Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar, dropped their bombshell that went by the nomenclature ‘Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules’. Remember how Prasad bombastically began that news conference? “The Government welcomes criticism and the right to dissent but let me make it clear… social media users running into crores should also be given a proper forum for the resolution of their grievances in a time-bound manner.”

It was on the basis of being fair to social media users that this step – sold as a “soft touch oversight mechanism” — was launched. Yet, over the years, what became more and more obvious was that the entity that gained the greatest heft from these rules was of course the Modi government itself. Guidelines, notifications and orders flowed seamlessly from the top to make the Rules more rigorous. And, of course, those who got to decide on how “grievances” of social media users were to be redressed are in lockstep with the central government.

For those who have taken their eyes off this story, let’s take a quick look at the various additions/alterations made to the original rules. In 2022, intermediaries were required to ensure that their users did not “create, upload or share prohibited content” – in other words they were to function as first responder-censor. In 2023, under the guise of regulating online gaming, the PIB was brought into the picture. Anything that the PIB considers fake now had to be taken down to avoid liability. This was seen as problematic because a state agency now had the power to decide what needed to be taken down and what retained. That year, the emergency powers under the IT Rules were used to block the BBC documentary series, The Modi Question.

As recently as a few days ago, the IT Rules were once again amended – a change that is interesting to say the least in this pre-election era: Now not just the ‘security agency’, even bureaucrats like the home secretary can order, every six month, the destruction of records of government interceptions and  its attempts to decrypt encrypted information.

In February 2021, shortly after Messrs Shankar and Javdekar gifted us with these IT Rules, Digipub, a platform representing the country’s online media, noted that the Rules appear to  “go against the fundamental principle of news and its role in a democracy” in some places.  It went on to say, “We draw your attention to the well settled jurisprudence on news media. A publication relating to current affairs represents not only the author or publisher’s fundamental right to expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution but also the citizen’s right to be informed and to have access to differing viewpoints. For the executive to have the absolute power to regulate the content of news portals or publications would be to strike not only at the constitutional scheme but at democracy itself.”

It also alerted the government to some anomalies: “In the Rules as drafted, expression may invite adverse consequential action, such as in the case of defamation. Such action should only happen after adjudication by open courts of law, on legal principles. This entire legal process is bypassed by the Rules, in as much as, upon a complaint of defamation, a body consisting of bureaucrats and controlled by the Central Government may decide the merits and block access to the content of any current affairs publication.”

The years since these observations have only provided evidence after evidence of the accuracy of Digipub’s cautionary notes. The IT Rules have turned out to be a schema that gives and gives the Central Government the freedom to take and take away our freedoms of speech and expression.

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NBDSA’s slap on the wrist

The public chastisement and fines imposed by the News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA) on television news shows that communalised news events like the Shradda Walker case and the Ram Navami violence, were perceived as too little slight a measure which came far too late.  They barely addressed the extent of social harm the programmes perpetrated. As one tweet put it: “Any point imposing such meagre penalties when they make crores selling h@te? If the NBDSA is serious about tackling this, the anchors should be ordered to apologise on air.” Other suggestions for more effective censure were also proffered, including taking these programmes off the air for a week, and so on.

There is merit in these observations. The argument that the punishment meted out was meant to be symbolic doesn’t cut much ice in an age when communal hatreds are manufactured on an industrial scale. It is only when the business model of hate generation fails conclusively will proprietors of these media houses really sit up and take the required action. Until then they will carry on hiring such anchors precisely because their brand of journalism represents a winning formula that bring in eyeballs and the advertising rupee.

There is also the other big question: why were so many other worthy contenders for public shaming left out? The anchor of Sundarshan News, Suresh Chavhanke, of ‘UPSC Jihad’ fame, had even participated in a public programme that called for the genocide of Muslims. Truly it is time this lot is defunded, both socially and financially?

What, by the way, is the NBDSA? While print media had its traditional regulators like the Press Council, private television which came into their own only in the 1990s, resisted external regulation and opted for what was framed as “self regulation”.  It is in this context that a group of private news broadcasters set up the NBDSA to deal with ethical issues that may arise in terms of television news content.

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 Readers write in…

Apex court’s two-handed verdict

Long time Wire reader, Sumanta Banerjee writes in: “Apropos ‘Moral of the Electoral Bond Story: Information Is Essential for Democracy’ (February 17), the Supreme Court dragged its feet for seven long years to come to a judgment on the issue.

“Even after declaring the Electoral Bond Scheme as illegal, it hasn’t ordered the freezing of the cash that the BJP and other parties have accumulated through the scheme and still holds on to. There is thus a loophole left in the judgment that will be utilised by political parties, which can continue to spend that illegally acquired money on their campaigns on the eve of the coming Lok Sabha election. The real moral of the story is that India’s apex court with one hand delivers a verdict that upholds constitutional norms, while with the other hand behind its back, allows vested interests to retain their ill-gotten wealth by refusing to penalise them.”

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The way forward

Fardeen alias Swami Aatm Gaurav writes to Arfa Khanum Sherwani, senior editor at the Wire: “I have been following your telecasts on various issues. Out of millions of Muslims alive on the planet today, I am one of the non-conventional few. I am basically an Osho disciple. It is a well known fact that Osho was against the concept of religions. He stood for what he called ‘religiousness’. In the present tumultuous times not only in India but also all over the world, we need a very special vision and I believe Osho is one person who holds the key to emergence of a new man.

“The situation in India is grim. Anyone who believes in humanity needs to raise their voice against this present regime. However, in this context, I need to say one thing. Muslims of India have not been thankful enough for what they got in this country…It is time that they wholeheartedly accept their sense of belonging to this country…Let Muslims have the courage to declare that they are Sufis now and not identified with petty propagandising in the name of Islam. The only way this regime can be punished is by Muslims exhibiting their elevated selves!”

Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in