Opposition parties continued their tirade against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led central government over the income tax department surveys in the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) offices in Delhi and Mumbai.
In its latest attack, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera hit out at the central government over the surveys that continued on Wednesday.
Highlighting the plummeting status of India’s Press freedom index which has now dipped to 150th as of 2022, Khera said, “India is the mother of democracy but why is India’s Prime Minister ‘Father of hypocrisy’ What will you get after sending IT-D to BBC office? Will his image get better? In the world’s press freedom index, India’s situation is dire compared to our neighboring countries. So, what happened yesterday will it ever help the rankings?”
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The party condemned the surveys and said they were in favour of the statements that the Editors Guild of India had issued while affirming the Congress will continue to protest against the disruptions that is being brought to the fourth pillar of democracy.
“The PM celebrates little known awards like the Philip Kotler Award which are never heard before and he craves for endorsements from foreign countries but when a media house exposes his own house, he first bans that documentary, then goes unleashing his agencies on these organisations, calls them part of a conspiracy hatched abroad against him,” Khera told media persons.
Khera alleged that the I-T survey were just a way to unleash central agencies only because the PM’s past was pulled up.
“BBC does not have a profit-loss revenue model. All BBC subscribers submit license fees to post offices in the United Kingdom, then the post office hands over the license fees to the BBC and that’s how the employees are paid and they do not depend on ads so how does India’s income tax department come into the picture? If Hindenburg had an office here, they too would have been surveyed by now. He (PM) made a mockery of the country. We are not a banana republic and we will never be”, Khera said.
The visit from tax officials comes less than a month after the BBC released a two-part documentary, ‘India: The Modi Question’, which looked at the 2002 Gujarat riots, and was dismissed as the Indian government as ‘propaganda’.
“Surveys are conducted to ascertain these irregularities. Only after completion of survey, it would be ascertained whether there are any deliberate irregularities or not,” an official said, asking not to be named.