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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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