The Supreme Court on Wednesday constituted a three-member Committee to undertake the task of suggesting guidelines to regulate advertisements by the ruling party on birthdays of political leaders and on other occasions to highlight achievements of the government.
Acting on writ petitions filed by Common Cause and others, a three-Judge Bench comprising Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N.V. Ramana said the committee would be headed by Prof. N.R. Madhava Menon, former Director, National Judicial Academy, Bhopal; with Mr. T.K. Viswanathan, former Secretary General, Lok Sabha and senior advocate Ranjit Kumar as members.
The Bench asked the committee to submit its report to this Court in three months after an intricate study of all the best practices in >public advertisements in different jurisdictions. The bench appointed Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting as Member Secretary.
The petitioners had submitted that advertisement campaigns were undertaken ostensibly to advertise certain public works and “almost all these advertisements contain photographs of the Ministers and important political personalities of the Government, which clearly show that these advertisement are framed for the purpose of highlighting the achievements of the incumbent government and aim to create an impression that those particular political personalities were directly responsible for providing public benefits to the people. In succinct, the use of public office and public funds for personal, political or partisan purposes is clearly malafide, illegal and not permissible under the Constitution. The expenditure on such advertisements is blatant misuse of public funds by the Central Government, State Governments, their departments and instrumentalities of the State as it fosters wastage of scarce funds of the exchequer in promoting private partisan interests as against public interest that is destructive of the rule of law.”
On behalf of the Centre and various States it was submitted that the purpose of such advertisements was not to give personal publicity to the leaders or to the political parties they belonged to rather the objective was to let the people know and have authentic information about the progress of the programmes/performance of the government they elected and form informed opinions, which was one of the fundamental rights of the citizens in our democracy. The Bench said Australia, Canada and some developing countries had adopted a policy to regulate Government advertisement to prevent abuse. Hence there was a need for similar guidelines in our country also, the bench added.
Writing the judgment CJI Sathasivam said “Directorate of Advertisement and Visual Publicity policy/guidelines do not govern the issues raised in these writ petitions and do not lay down any criteria for the advertisements to qualify for “public purpose” as opposed to partisan ends and political mileage, there is a need for substantive guidelines to be issued by this Court until the legislature enacts a law in this regard.” The bench directed the matter to be listed after three months after receipt of report from the panel.
