Tamil Nadu politicians shun state-funded media

Ideated as a novel initiative in 1998 to propagate the idea of state funding of political parties, Doordarshan and All India Radio- the state owned electronic media allotted fixed time for national parties and recognised regional parties for campaign during elections. 

The concept was to cut down the campaign expenditure of parties and was considered as a pioneering step. Speaking to DTNext , DMK spokesperson K S Radhakrishnan said that even though the initiative gained huge popularity among the political parties when it was introduced, the advent of private television channels robbed the sheen out of the scheme. 

“Even though the use of this media by political parties has considerably come down now, there was a time when the very same political parties made a beeline to these media houses and made the most of the opportunity during elections,” he said and added that the concept of state funding of elections was first mooted by the Indrajit Gupta Committee in 1998. 

The committee report backed the partial state funding of elections in the short term considering the then prevailing economic condition of the country. Subsequently the 1999 Law Commission too concurred with the recommendations of the committee. State funding was also expected to free the parties from depending on corporate funding. 

“We are consistently demanding that the Indrajit Gupta Committee report be implemented as part of electoral reforms,” he added. The downtrend of the role of state-owned electronic media in election campaigns is also attributed to the entry of television channels owned by Tamil Nadu political party well-wishers. 

When contacted a Prasar Bharati official told DTNext that the political parties were still interested in using the All India Radio network for election campaigns. “Some parties might not find Doordarshan as the right medium for campaigns but AIR’s popularity has not dwindled” the official said.