New Delhi: The Editors Guild of India has said it was “deeply concerned” about the Income Tax surveys at the offices of British broadcaster BBC Tuesday, calling it a “continuation of a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass press organisations that are critical of government policies or the ruling establishment”.
The Guild noted that the survey comes soon after the release of two documentaries by the BBC “on the 2002 violence in Gujarat and the current status of the minorities in India”.
It said, “The documentaries stirred political waters with the government criticizing the BBC for wrong and prejudiced reportage on the Gujarat violence, and attempted to ban online access and viewing of the film in India”.
Around 20 officials from the Income Tax department conducted a survey operation in the BBC’s New Delhi and Mumbai offices Tuesday, to probe irregularities in “transfer pricing” and “international taxation”.
Several account books and documents along with phones of journalists were also seized in the survey action, sources told ThePrint.
Calling this survey a harassment of the media, the Guild said in a statement: “In September 2021, offices of NewsClick and Newslaundry were similarly “surveyed” by IT department. In June 2021, there were surveys against Dainik Bhaskar and Bharat Samachar. In February 2021 the ED (Enforcement Directorate) had conducted raids at the office of NewsClick. In each case, the raids and surveys were against the backdrop of critical coverage of the government establishment by the news organisations.”
The Guild said this trend undermined constitutional democracy. It demanded that “great care and sensitivity” be shown in all such investigations so as to not undermine the rights of journalists and media organisations.
The statement signed by Guild office holders Seema Mustafa, Ananth Nath and Shriram Pawar concluded: “Further, the Guild reiterates its earlier demand that governments ensure that such investigations are conducted within the prescribed rules and that they don’t degenerate into instruments of harassment to intimidate independent media.”
The Income Tax survey comes weeks after the BBC aired a documentary titled, “India: The Modi Question”, made on the 2002 Gujarat riots when Narendra Modi was the state’s chief minister.
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