Click to play videoThis year’s race for Raisina Hill will arguably go down in the history of India’s Presidential polls as being the dirtiest ever.
Both the big players – the Congress and the BJP – are working overtime to dig out dirt against each others’ nominee, while swearing, ironically, by sanctity of the President's office.
While on the one hand allegations have been surfacing – almost everyday – against UPA nominee Pratibha Patil, NDA-backed Bhairon Singh Shekhawat – also the sitting Vice President of India – hasn’t been spared either.
As July 19 – the date of the crucial election nears – CNN-IBN debates if political parties are using the media to run their campaigns and destroying the sanctity of the office of the President.
On the panel of Face the Nation to debate the issue were Editor-in-Chief of Outlook, Vinod Mehta; BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad and Congress’ spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
The initial results of the SMS poll indicated most viewers agreed that politicians were destroying the sanctity of the Presidential post, with 71 per cent of them answering in affirmative.
Only 29 per cent of the viewers seemed to believe that politicians hadn’t inflicted much damage.
Who will have the last laugh?
Singhvi opened the show with his reaction to the poll results and began with what he described as the “usual caveats about SMS polls”, indicating he wasn’t too convinced with the authenticity of such polls.
“Although your proposition is over-stated, there’s no doubt that there’s some truth to it. The election to Indian presidency is always political, unreal and artificial. But certainly, it’s been a little above the usual din of Indian politics,” he said.
Singhvi also made an interesting point when he said somewhere along the sequence of events, Newton’s law needed to be applied to piece together the narrative. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, just go back two weeks when the whole things started. At the residence of a Cabinet Minister, a presser is organised by a former aide of a Prime Minister Surendra Kulkarni and a charge of a murder is made where Mrs Pratibha Patil is portrayed as an accused. Thereafter, we have a booklet issued of BJP and allegations galore. So who has started the whole thing?”
BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad responded to Singhvi’s statement strongly. “He will say like that. The post of President is entitled to all dignity and respect but the 21st century India is entitled to certain answers. If an RBI report indicates money swindling and a High Court notice is pending against Pratibha Patil. The lady who held the presser was the wife of a slain Congress president and a CBI notice is pending against her. The question is – what kind of a President are we planning to have?” he said.
Prasad also said it wasn’t the BJP that started it all. He, in fact, attributed it to a CNN-IBN story that showed Pratibha Cooperative bank swindling money. “The country is entitled to know and we are only asking some questions about the credibility of the kind of President we intend to have,” he said.
He also cited a 1970 Supreme Court judgement of S K Singh versus V V Giri where a malicious pamphlet campaign was conducted against Sanjeeva Reddy by Congress.
Prasad rounded up his argument by saying India needed to know the truth about who could be it’s first citizen.
Vinod Mehta seemed to be the more neutral of the three voices on the show and while the two politicians blamed each other, the mediaman blamed the media instead.
Mehta said it was but natural for politicians to blame each other for the Presidential mess but the press shouldn’t have fallen prey to the trap. “This poll is a new low. It has taken Indian politics to a gutter and I think the rebuke entailed in SC’s judgement should speak for itself. To think the next time around we’d have a cleaner election would be living in fool’s paradise,” Mehta said adding politics in India had become too nasty and vicious.
Media madness: Who's to blame?
Mehta also said he wasn’t so much worried about politicians as he was about the hysteria with which some sections of media got involved. “Media followed the BJP line hook, line and sinker and none exercised his critical faculty. We did not see that the so-called RBI report was a cut and paste job that had been spun and restored. While politicians can get hysterical, why should we (media)?” He labeled as unfortunate the manner in which “certain sections” of media resorted to Pratibha bashing.
However, Prasad maintained media wasn’t to be blamed in “this information age” and Indians should stop being so cagey about things. He denied fishing out charges against Patil was resorting to gutter politics. “The country is entitled to know if High Court has a problem with the Presidential candidate. In the modern age, it’s a prerequisite to know the antecedents of a candidate.”
Singhvi – whose party has been accused by many in the media of hiding its head like ostriches after blaming sitting Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat of fraud – completely rubbished Prasad’s point of view. “I think Vinod Mehta has made a very valid point and I want to make it from a different angle. The media magnifies everything so much that we believe we are living for the moment. The media has been used by letting out information and magnifying it to proportions that the runup up July 19 seems like a huge criminal conspiracy,” he said.
Ironically, Singhvi tried to make his point clear by saying while Pratibha – who hasn’t even been proved guilty in any case – was being projected as a murdress, Shekhawat has got away scot-free despite an FIR in his name.
Final results of the SMS poll:
Are political parties destroying the sanctity of the office of the President?
Yes: 75 per cent
No: 25 per cent
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