Asia-Pacific

Campaigning for general election in India gathers momentum amid nationwide concern

According to the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers in May last year, India’s press freedom ranking has dropped 11 places to 161 out of 180 countries it surveyed

A man uses his mobile phone in front of an election awareness hoarding at a petrol pump in Varanasi, ahead of the country's upcoming general elections. Photograph: Niharika Kulkarni/AFP via Getty Images

Rahul Bedi's face
Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
Thu Apr 11 2024 - 17:41

As campaigning gathers momentum across India in advance of the first round of voting in the general election on April 19th, there is widespread concern among opposition parties, human rights activists, think tanks and journalists regarding the ‘ influence prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government exercises over the country’s electronic, print and social media.

According to the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) in May last year, India’s press freedom ranking has dropped 11 places to 161 out of 180 countries it surveyed, lower than Afghanistan ranked at 152, Pakistan at 150 and Somalia at 141.

RSF said that numerous journalists, critical of the BJP government after it came to power in 2014 and was re-elected for another five-year term in 2019, were victims of unrelenting harassment.

Non-Governmental Organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protest Journalists have claimed that Indian authorities are increasingly targeting journalists for questioning federal and state BJP governments by prosecuting them under Colonial-era sedition statutes.

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Over the last decade several media organisations and their editorial staff, critical of the BJP, have been charged either by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate (ED, responsible for fighting economic crimes) and the income tax department over assorted financial accusations which take years to adjudicate in India’s notoriously slow judicial system.

According to Rajdeep Sardesai, one of India’s leading English language television news anchors, it is “almost demanded” of journalists now to take sides. Speaking at a seminar in late March in New Delhi on media coverage of the elections, he said partisanship is rewarded by the BJP and that the space for objective journalism is “shrinking and shrinking”.

A nationwide survey of 206 journalists in July 2023 by the Delhi-based Centre for Study of Developing Societies said fear of harassment had “persuaded” many television, print and digital media outlets to support the BJP

Even six-time BJP MP Subramanian Swamy agreed, declaring on his Facebook page last June, that India’s media had been “totally castrated”.

A nationwide survey of 206 journalists in July 2023 by the Delhi-based Centre for Study of Developing Societies said fear of harassment had “persuaded” many television, print and digital media outlets to support the BJP.

The study said 82 per cent of the journalists surveyed admitted that their respective media organisations “generally favoured” the BJP and more than 50 per cent were fearful of losing their jobs if they did not.

The government’s Information Technology Amendment rules, instituted in April 2023, empowered the federal authorities to constitute a “fact-checking unit” with powers to determine “fake, false or misleading news” with regard to reporting government matters and to take it down.

At the time the Editors Guild of India said the government had neither specified details of the fact-checking unit nor provided any judicial oversight in accordance with established legal statutes to withdraw news content or block social media handles.

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In February 2023 Indian tax officials raided the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, shortly after the channel had aired an investigative documentary on Mr Modi’s involvement in the 2002 sectarian riots in western Gujarat state, when he was its chief minister. More than 1,200 people, mostly Muslims, died in the violence.

In February this year, the Indian authorities compelled French journalist Vanessa Dougnac, who had reported from India for newspapers like Le Soir and La Croix back home for 25 years, to leave India after they withdrew Overseas Citizen of India status, a lifetime residency permit granted to foreigners married to an Indian person.

Earlier, in September 2022 they had cancelled her journalist’s work permit, because as Dougnac declared in her open farewell letter in February 2024, she was accused by Indian officials of writing “malicious” articles that harmed the “interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India”. She was also censured for “prejudicing the interests of the [Indian] state”.

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IndiaNarendra Modi