Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_India

On May 2018, the Delhi High Court had ordered to set aside the disqualification of BJP’s Narottam Mishra on the grounds of paid news. With the upcoming elections in 2019 cases of paid news keep on increasing and previously the apex court had refused to hear pleas on those grounds. Paid news is a phenomenon by which political advertising is presented as a news item.

Usually, the EC doesn’t intervene in such cases but it had to intervene especially after the Delhi HC order not only overturned the EC’s order on Mishra’s disqualification, but it also stated that the Commission’s remittance being limited to election expenditure ‘incurred by candidates’ and not ‘content of speech’. One of the main cases associated with this is that of Narottam Misra against whom Congress leader Rajendra Bharati had filed an appeal which arose regarding paid news cases before the polls.

Sources cite that almost 600 paid news complaints were forwarded by EC to the Press Council of India with reference to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. EC has repeatedly been asking the Law Ministry to treat paid news as a ‘cognisable offense’. The 2015 Law Commission reports call for amendments in laws to check on such problems. The UPA government had set up a group of ministers to examine the issue during their regime…

“…the content of a media article or a new feature or series of features on particular candidates should ordinarily not be regulated indirectly through the directives of EC; they essentially fall within the domain of free speech…” stated the HC order.

Ashwini Upadhyay, a notable lawyer has asked the government to take appropriate steps to implement the recommendations of the EC and Law Commission of India on the paid news and political advertisements. He had also requested the Supreme Court to ‘direct and declare’ that the act of indulging in the publication of paid news is a punishable offense as it is a corrupt practice under section 123 (4) of the Representation of People’s Act, 1951.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *