File photo of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
The Calcutta High Court has ordered that the Mamata Banerjee government must give advertisements to Ganashakti, a Bengali daily that is affiliated to the CPI-M. The order was passed on February 27 by Justice Debangsu Basak but came to the notice of the newspaper on Friday evening. It is not known yet if the state government plans to challenge this order in a higher court.
Since May 20, 2011, immediately after Mamata Banerjee came to power in West Bengal, the state government stopped giving any ads to Ganashakti. The daily went to court in 2012 claiming it was being discriminated against, that the refusal to give ads to it violated free speech and was unconstitutional.
While the writ was pending, the government took a decision on July 12, 2013, that it was unable to give ads to Ganashakti because the newspaper was owned and published by the West Bengal State Committee of CPI-M and giving it ads would amount to funding a political party by the government.
Moreover, the state argued, placing of ads was a commercial transaction and the state government had the right to decide who to give it to.
The government also claimed that it had sought ad rates from Ganashakti and those provided by it were "not clear", according to Abhratosh Majumdar, the government pleader.
On behalf of Ganashakti, advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, contended that the newspaper was accredited by the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) and recognized by the Centre's Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) and that the right to free speech was a fundamental right.
The state government had to follow DAVP rules, Mr Bhattacharyya contended. Other state governments and even the Central government, he pointed out, placed ads in Ganashakti.
Mr Bhattacharyya also argued that the law allows the postal department to deliver newspapers, irrespective of who owns it, at less than normal rates. If a Central law allows a subsidy to an organ of a political party for its postal transmission, that is not construed to be funding a political party.
Therefore, ads to a newspaper should not be seen as funding its owner. By that count, the state should not give ads to any privately owned newspaper either. He submitted that the July 2013 decision of the government should be squashed.
The last hearing of the case was on December 3, 2014. On February 27, Justice Debangsu Basak set aside the July 2013 decision of the state government and ordered it to grant ads to Ganashakti. A key point in the order: ownership of a newspaper is not a criteria to deny ads by the state.