Poll Analysis | Immaturity, a Political Prerogative?
Virbhadra Singh, the five-time chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, was found guilty for his unaccounted cash entries emerging from his Income Tax (I-T) returns. The minister reacted to the media when asked on the various allegations made against him. He reacted by warning the media and said, "I will break your cameras. Don't you have any work? The allegations are wrong and baseless". Though such reactions can never be justified, one needs to introspect on the assumed freedom to threaten. This is where the idiomatic phrase - absolute power corrupts absolutely seems true. Being an elected representative, it's not the minister's prerogative to threaten and get away with it.
Press Council of India (PCI) chairman Justice Markandey Katju called out the immature reaction of Virbhadra Singh as "intolerant behaviour" and also added that such behavior by politicians has no place in a democracy. ipaidabribe conducted a poll seeking the readers’ opinion on whether immature reactions of ministers such as Virbhadra Singh give a glimpse of their guilty actions? Agreeing to the question, 87 % of our readers agreed that they could see this kind of a correlation while only 13 % of them disagreed with the question.
Recently a similar instance was witnessed when Salman Khurshid apparently said “Let him come to Farrukhabad but how will he go back” referring to Arvind Kejriwal. This kind of a ‘threat’ shows the assumed vulnerability of someone that does not have any political influence.
Such statements in addition to the threat of slamming sedition charges loom large over nuanced media that enjoy the right to criticize. Intolerance before media reflects the lack of control over one’s expressions as well as the attitude of taking the electorate for granted.