It is necessary to see how news media has responded to the opposition leader’s article and how soon.

Prem Shankar Jha

It has taken the Election Commission four months to respond to opposition leader Rahul Gandhi’s first disturbing accusation at a press conference in February – that the Commission had somehow managed not to notice that there were 16 lakh more adults on the voters’ list for the Maharashtra assembly elections than the entire adult population of the state, and that while the electorate in the state had increased by 32 lakh persons between the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it had increased by 39 lakhs in five months between the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in 2024. 

On June 7, Rahul Gandhi repeated the accusation with elaborations in an editorial page article in the Indian Express. Its responses came in the same newspaper in the form of an elaborate piece by reporters quoting an unnamed official of the Election Commission and a condescending article belittling Rahul Gandhi, by no less important a person than the chief minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis. 

That these were published within 24 hours of Gandhi’s article shows that the Indian Express had felt it necessary to submit Gandhi’s letter to the Modi government and had waited for its response before publishing. This extraordinary act of caution from a newspaper widely respected for its courage shows just how severe the pressure from the Modi government on the media has become during the past 11 years. 

Since these are separate pieces, I shall deal with their merits separately….

https://thewire.in/government/rahul-gandhi-election-commission-response-falls-short

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