Siddaramaiah says he had nothing to do with Karnataka Assembly resolution on journalists' arrest

Do something wacky without much thought and get flak from everyone around. Then try desperately to get out of the awkward mess like a mouse caught in a trap. This, more or less, has been the story of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s Congress government in Karnataka.

The latest in Siddaramaiah’s comedy of errors turns out to be a tragedy for the media in general and two Kannada editors – Ravi Belagere, editor of Hi Bangalore and Anil Raju, editor of Yelahanka Voice – in particular. The 21 June ruling of Karnataka Assembly Speaker KB Koliwad of sentencing the two editors to a year’s imprisonment has pushed the chief minister into quite a spot which he is trying to squeeze out of.

The editors had allegedly breached the privilege of the legislature by writing articles that “defamed” Koliwad and a BJP MLA. The Speaker also fined them Rs 10,000 each, saying that, if they failed to pay up, their jail terms would be extended by six months.

After protests poured forth from all quarters, including newspapers, the Editors Guild, Amnesty International and others, Siddaramaiah developed cold feet. While the police is yet to implement the Speaker’s orders allegedly because of a go-slow caution given by the chief minister, the matter now rests with the Karnataka High Court which on Thursday advised both sides to come to an amicable settlement pending its final ruling.

Getting into an awful predicament is easier than getting out of it. Siddaramaiah now says he or his government had “nothing to do with” the recommendation of arrest of Belagere and Raju. The chief minister found himself in a fix after KC Venugopal, the AICC general secretary in charge of Karnataka, expressed his displeasure with the Speaker’s decision.

On his part, the Speaker said that he only accepted the recommendations of the Privileges Committee and that he is in no position to rescind the order. Only a special session of the legislature is empowered to withdraw his decision, he said.

Amorphous privileges, obscure laws

In 1999, the newspaper where I worked convened an in-house meeting of senior editors and called legal experts to discuss, among other things, the threats we faced from parliamentary privileges. Various legal luminaries explained to us over three days that what constitutes a breach of privilege and what should be the punishment for it has been left bewilderingly vague by relevant laws.

The legislative or parliamentary privilege is a legacy from medieval Britain where an emerging Parliament had designed it as an insurance against a dominant monarchy. It was – as it still is in India – an unexplained and uncodified law, which has the potential to be used by politicians to browbeat journalists when faced with a threat, real or imaginary.

There has never been a doubt that the power to punish journalists for breach of legislative privilege must be invoked in the rarest of rare cases and only when the alleged crime amounts to obstruction of the functioning of legislators and the legislature.

Exploiting ‘breach of privilege’ as an authoritarian tool to intimidate journalists only translates to using a provision, meant for protecting the freedom of legislators on the floor of the House, to deny the media its own independence guaranteed by the Constitution.

The question of whether Belagere and Raju were fair in their articles is immaterial to the debate on whether the legislature must have the power to punish journalists by using a provision that raises more questions than it answers.

The Tamil Nadu example

The most blatant abuse of the privilege weapon was witnessed in Tamil Nadu on 7 November, 2003 when the Assembly Speaker, at the bidding of then Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, “sentenced” the publisher of The Hindu S Rangarajan, editor N Ravi, executive editor Malini Parthasarathy, associate editor V Jayanth and special correspondent Radha Venkatesan as well as S Selvam, the editor of DMK paper Murasoli to 15 days of imprisonment.

The Supreme Court stayed the arrests and referred the matter to a Constitutional bench. Jayalalithaa subsequently dropped the privilege case after a nationwide furore against her assault on the press and after she lost the 2004 Lok Sabha election.

Compared to the 15-day jail term for the Chennai journalists in 2003, the one-year imprisonment for the two Kannada editors is even harsher. Besides, the Privileges Committee report on Belagere was not even discussed in the Assembly as it should have been.

The Karnataka Assembly Speaker’s ruling was, in fact, the climax of anger against the media that had been bottling up for some time among all parties.

Pent-up anger bursts forth

On 22 March, legislators cutting across party lines bashed the media in the legislature for allegedly damaging their reputation. A Janata Dal (Secular) legislator said that a videographer of weddings was running a TV channel in his constituency and demanded “minimum qualifications” for journalists.

Health minister Ramesh Kumar said the media had falsely accused him of having grabbed land without bothering to give his version. Some objected to the media showing legislators dozing off in the legislature (“We are also human,” they claimed). Others objected to some channels making a big thing out of Siddaramaiah changing his car after a crow had sat on it.

On 28 March, the Speaker set up a joint House panel to find ways to “regulate” the media. Then on 21 June, the Speaker slapped jail sentences on two journalists.

It’s nobody’s case that TRP-driven journalism doesn’t flourish in India and that media is a fountain of wisdom and an epitome of moral turpitude, but politically motivated and draconian moves to regulate channels and newspapers are an affront to a free society.