The Supreme Court on Friday allowed Governors and Chief Ministers to share space on electronic and print media in Government advertisements by rolling back its previous order that restricted this privilege to President, Prime Minister and Chief Justice of India.
This comes as a major relief to the print media that was badly hit by the earlier order as the number of Government advertisements fell.
Retracting its order, a Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and PC Ghose said, “The exception carved out in paragraph 23 of judgment dated May 13, 2015 permitting publication of photographs of President, Prime Minister and Chief Justice of the country, subject to the said authorities themselves deciding the question, is now extended to Governors and the Chief Ministers of
the States.”
The apex court accepted the argument by the Centre, Karnataka, West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, which filed review petitions challenging the May 13 decision. The Centre and States maintained a common argument that restricting the right to publish photographs to just PM and President violated the principles of federalism where Chief Ministers in a State enjoy equal status under the Constitution as PM in the Union Government.
The petitions even demanded that photographs of Cabinet Ministers, State Cabinet Ministers be allowed in Government advertisements. The Bench allowed this request partly by saying that the photographs of Central and State Ministers can be shown in place of the PM or CM.
It said, “In lieu of the photograph of the Prime Minister, the photograph of the Departmental (Cabinet) Minister/Minister in-charge of the Ministry concerned may be published, if so desired.”
Similarly for States, photographs of the Cabinet Minister or Minister in-charge in lieu of the photograph of CM could be published.
The argument on the review petitions had witnessed high-voltage submissions by Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi and several senior advocates for various States. Rohatgi, who batted for the States had said that showing photographs of the PM alone leads to creation of a personality cult and Ministers and CMs should be given an opportunity to inform the electors, who voted them to power, about various programmes and schemes launched by the elected Government.
However, other directions contained in the May 13, 2015 order disallowing photographs of political party heads to appear on Government-sponsored advertisements will continue. In addition, the SC had also directed that no advertisements would be published on election eve and had ordered formation of a three-member committee to regulate the issue of public advertisements and performance audit by each Ministry.