West Bengal to move SC; wants Didi's face back in Govt ads

With West Bengal elections less than a year away, the Mamata Banerjee Government was planning to move the Supreme Court seeking a review photos of Chief Ministers and other such functionaries save the President, Prime Minister, and Chief Justice of India from Government advertisements.

A review petition was likely to be filed as soon as the court reopens in July, sources said adding related papers had been sent to the Resident Commissioner’s office in Delhi.

The main contention of the State are “like the Prime Minister who heads a Government at the Centre the Chief Minister is at the helm of a Government in the State so there is not much of a difference between them,” said a source at the Bengal Government headquarters at Nabanna.The Government would also reason out with the court that both the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers were elected representatives of the people and so they should be treated on par.

The Government was also likely to argue that in a federal structure one Government was not inferior to the other and so their heads should not be treated differentially.The State would also contend that both the Centre and the States ran a host of social schemes and if the Centre had the right to publicise them so did the State. Furthermore the official at Nabanna said the Government was likely to argue that if putting pictures of the Chief Minister would mean publicising his or her political cult at the expense of tax-payer’s money then the case of the Prime Minister was no different.

Earlier the apex court had banned putting pictures of any other personality save President, Chief Justice of India and Prime Minister in Government advertisements calling it an “antithesis to democracy” which encouraged “personality cult” at the cost of public money.The court said that the publication of such photographs had a tendency to associate individuals with social benefit schemes or achievements and hence “photographs have the potential of developing the personality cult and the image of one or a few individuals which is a direct antithesis of democratic functioning.”

The Bench said that the legitimate objective of advertisements could be achieved without publishing pictures of individuals who were likely to be benefited from such ads.The reason why the Trinamool Government was desperate to get the Supreme Court order vacated was the proximity of next year’s Assembly elections. The Chief Minister wanted to publicise some social schemes like Kanyashree — providing `25,000 to poor girls who had attained 18 years of age — and other such programmes like distribution of bicycles and bangles to women apart from certain schemes for the minorities.

“The Government aided publicity is needed all the more because the Trinamool Congress is desperate to counter the adverse publicity that it has gained over the years thanks to a corrupt and goonda raj it has perpetuated — where women are raped by the day and where even the police officers are not spared,” said Md Salim CPI(M) MP.