‘Survey of BBC offices was unhappy move’

When Income-tax officials began a marathon survey at the British Broadcasting Corporation’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai last week, media reports linked it to the telecast of  a two-part documentary “India: the Modi question” by the channel  a few weeks earlier. It had turned the spotlight once again on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in the communal riots that rocked Gujarat in 2002 soon after he became the state’s Chief Minister.

BBC did not air the documentary in India. But it could be accessed in the country on the web.  

The documentary embarrassed Modi by raking up an issue which he thought he had put behind him. The Supreme Court had given him a clean chit and he had led the Bharatiya Janata Party to victory in two successive parliamentary elections.

The flashback to 2002 came as Modi was looking forward to a hat-trick in next year’s elections.

The government banned the documentary in India. Service providers were asked to remove all links to the documentary from social media platforms.

The BJP had raised questions about the timing of the BBC documentary. The opposition raised questions about the timing of the action on BBC offices. Officials said the Income-tax department acted after BBC failed to respond to notices it had issued. But this was no routine tax investigation. It was accompanied by shrill cries from the Hindutva camp. A BJP leader called BBC a corrupt corporation. While tax officials were inside a BBC office, an organisation which calls itself Hindu Sena (Army) staged a noisy demonstration outside.

Tax officials termed the exercise a survey, not a raid. The Income-tax Act has a section which gives officials the power to enter any place for a tax-related survey. At the end of the three-day survey, the department issued a statement, couched in delightfully vague terms.

It said the survey revealed “multiple irregularities” and unearthed “crucial evidence” by way of statements of employees, digital evidence and documents.

Irregularities are not necessarily illegalities which call for prosecution and punishment. In fact, many laws contain provisions for regularising irregularities.

These are invoked without raising controversy.

While the tax department claimed it had found some crucial evidence, it did not indicate whether it was contemplating legal action against BBC. It said the evidence would be further examined “in due course.” It means no immediate action is likely.

One irregularity which the department said it had found was non-payment of tax on certain remittances that were not disclosed as income in India.

BBC’s operations in the country involve generation and consumption of content in English as well as various local languages. The department said incomes or profits shown by various BBC units in India were not “commensurate with the scale of operations.”

The department also claimed the survey had thrown up several discrepancies and inconsistencies with regard to certain documentation.

Cutting through officials and bureaucratic obfuscations, what the taxmen’s three-day labour yielded is a familiar story: there are differences between the assessor and the assessee on the extent of tax liability. The law has laid down procedures to resolve such differences. Clearly, the government acted ill-advisedly in setting tax  officials after the respected global media organisation and allowing its foot soldiers to take the issue to the street.   

After the taxmen left its offices, a BBC spokesperson said the organisation would continue to cooperate with the authorities and hoped matters would be resolved as soon as possible.

The spokesperson said some BBC staffers were subjected to lengthy questioning and forced to remain in the office overnight.

 “We stand by our colleagues and journalists who will continue to report without fear or favour,” the spokesperson added.

As an entity doing business in India, BBC has an obligation to respect the laws of the land. The quiescent state of the national media must not cause the government to forget that it has a corresponding obligation to respect the freedom of the press. A section of the Indian media has developed an affinity for the Hindutva ideology out of conviction or for other reasons. Another section appears to have been chilled into silence by the harsh government action against critics.

Mukesh Ambani, a businessman close to Modi, now controls a big segment of the national media. Within a year of Modi’s assumption of office, the government’s investigative agencies started looking into the affairs of NDTV, a television company with a good professional record. Today it is part of the empire of Gautam Adani, another businessman close to Modi.