The Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that allowing only the face of Prime Minister to appear in Government advertisements results in the development of a “personality cult” that should be discouraged in a democracy. The Centre batted in favour of political advertisements showing the pictures of Chief Ministers, Ministers and his Cabinet colleagues saying that such order akin to “pre-censorship” by the court blocks the public’s right to know and the elected representatives’ right to inform how the various Ministries, departments of Governments are performing.
The Centre had filed a review petition against the May 13, 2015 order passed by the SC restricting ads issued by public authorities, departments, Ministries from showing any pictures of political leaders, Ministers or Chief Ministers except the Prime Minister, the President and the Chief Justice of India. The order relied on the principle that public money cannot be wasted by political parties and establishments to glorify its leaders as photographs have potential of developing “personality cult”.
Reserving orders on the arguments by the Centre and a few other States, who challenged the SC verdict, the Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and PC Ghose even issued contempt notices to the Delhi and Tamil Nadu Governments after some advertisements issued by the respective States in violation of the order were brought to the notice of the court. The contempt petition was argued by advocate Prashant Bhushan, who showed clippings along with transcript of the electronic advertisement. The matter will come up after six weeks.
Bhushan had also filed a separate petition to do away even with the face of the PM in Government ads, which surprisingly went unopposed as the Centre was not present to either support or oppose this prayer.
Arguing for Centre’s review petition earlier in the day, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi submitted that in a federal structure, the face of Prime Minister represented the Centre as much as the picture of Chief Minister represented a State. Terming the PM as “first among equals”, Rohatgi reasoned the exclusion of Ministers being shown in the advertisements who have become “nameless” and “faceless” as only the Prime Minister’s face appears in all Government commercials. He said, “If only the PM’s picture is shown in all Government ads, it would result in personality cult as mentioned by this court order itself as the public is looking at only one face in all ads.”
Other Ministers and the Chief Ministers are also answerable to public, he said, adding that besides print, there is electronic and social media, which the court has not considered. Other States backing the the Centre were Karnataka, West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh.