Again, it is the excess of the executive which seems to have led the judiciary to order restraint, even though, strictly speaking, it was not the latter’s domain. The order by the Supreme Court to restrict the use of photographs in government advertisements to only those of the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India is welcome only to the extent it curbs the abuse of taxpayers’ funds on such activities. Acting on a plea by the NGOs Common Cause and the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, the apex court barred every other executive authority, central or State, to take out advertisements with photographs of ministers and other officials to make various announcements. This practice had become so prevalent in recent years that the only real gainers seemed to be the publications and television channels favoured with these advertisements. Under the Congress regimes, hundreds of crores were routinely spent on memorializing birthdays and death anniversaries of the members of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Hundreds of schemes and projects named after various members of the controlling family of the Congress Party were regularly featured with their mug shots in these advertisements taken out by the party governments with an eye on currying favours with the living members of the same family. Building a `personality cult’ around these names, as the apex court put it, was the objective in order to exploit the same for purely political aims. No public purpose was served by the sheer waste of such colossal amounts of public funds. However, questions are bound to be raised due to the invidious nature of the court order, which while ordering a blanket ban on photo-ads of politicians has nonetheless made an exception in the case of the president, the prime minister and the chief justice of India. One can understand the exception being made in the case of the Head of the Republic, who, after all, is supposed to be above the political fray. But allowing the prime minister’s photograph to be featured in the official ads is rather controversial. He may well be the head of the government of the day but he holds that position by dint of the fact that he is an active politician. Allowing him to be featured in government ads and barring State chief ministers seems unfair. Admittedly, even the CMs have most flagrantly misused public funds to build own public image. In Delhi, for instance, soon after Arvind Kejriwal became chief minister, more than a thousand billboards, hoardings and newspaper ads were taken out with his mug shot prominently displayed, asking the people to organize sting operations against corrupt officials. In any case, if the objective was to curb the misuse of public funds, that job is better done by the other constitutional authority, that is, the comptroller and auditor general than by the higher judiciary which has its hands full with a huge arrears of cases. Besides, it is not clear as to how the chief justice has been granted exemption from the no-photo edict. We cannot help but suspect an avoidable overreach by the judiciary, though, as we noted above, the executive had gone overboard regularly splashing the media with self-glorifying advertisements at public expense. And judiciary steps in with alacrity to correct the abuse even if it has no direct locus standi in the matter.
Meanwhile, the court was right in staying, on appeal, the operation of the circular issued by the Kejriwal Government ordering officials to initiate criminal defamation cases against the media whose writings were not to his liking. A two-member bench of Justices Dipak Misra and P C Pant rapped the Delhi CM for `running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.’ Only a fortnight ago, Kejriwal had prayed in the apex court against provisions in the law which allowed criminal defamation. He had argued that these provisions impaired the right to freedom of speech and expression. For him to order his officials to launch criminal defamation cases against those who he considered were tarnishing the image of the AAP leaders and their government was, therefore, hypocritical. It duly exposed his duplicitous conduct. Yet another instance which goes to prove that Kejriwal is a false messiah. People should be wary of his self-seeking ways.
