ELECTION COMMISSION AS CENSOR

The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials: "A string of advertisements, put out by an obscure trust, portrayed the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as a police informer during the Quit India movement of 1942. Another, also released by a trust, obliquely questioned the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi's commitment to the country by harping on her foreign origin.

Why should political advertisements be subject to severe conditions, above all pre-censorship? Would it not have been enough to have let the Election Commission intervene whenever an objectionable ad was brought to its notice rather than give it the extraordinary powers of Censor-in-chief? What are the implications of giving the Commission, which is constitutionally responsible only for the conduct of free and fair elections, the power to restrict what appears in the news media and even the power to punish them? "