New Delhi, February 15, 2023 (PPI-OT):The UK government is “closely monitoring” the situation following the Indian Income Tax departments “surveys” at the BBC offices in India on February 14, reports said. The Indian official news agency Press Trus of India (PTI) reported that while there has been no official statement from the UK government on the “survey”, sources said they are “closely monitoring” the situation.
Reacting to the Indian IT department’s action, the British public broadcaster said that it was “fully cooperating” with the authorities and hoped that the situation will be resolved “as soon as possible”. PTI said that there was “shock in the UK” as news of the survey unfolded early on Tuesday morning. There was a broad consensus that the action was linked to the BBC documentary, which was banned in India by the Modi government.
“Everyone’s shocked and no one is fooled that today’s tax survey, as it’s being called, is a retaliation to the recent BBC documentary ‘The Modi Question’,” said Mukulika Banerjee, a leading author and academic at the London School of Economics (LSE). “The BBC is an independent public broadcaster so if it puts out a documentary, it is not acting at the behest of the British government. In fact, BBC journalists routinely grill the British PM and all elected officials holding them accountable for their actions. The word ‘independent’ means just that,” she said, according to Indian media.
“Finally, the Indian government has appointed India as the ‘Mother of Democracy’ during its year of the G20 Presidency and plastered posters across every inch of the country proclaiming that. It should know then that one of the basic principles of being a democracy is to recognise that press freedom is an essential central pillar of a functioning democracy. They really need to understand that this is what press freedom looks like. And stop its shameful harassment of the BBC in Delhi and Mumbai,” Mukulika Banerjee added. The South Asia Solidarity Group, a human rights organisation based in the UK, dubbed it a “blatantly vindictive move”.
“In the wake of the government’s ban on sharing extracts or screening the documentary, this raid makes it clear that the Modi government will attack all those who criticise Narendra Modi, the BJP and those close to them,” said Mukti Shah, spokesperson for the group.
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