After midnight of Tuesday, Indian Express on Twitter sent out two tweets within a span of 11 minutes. Here are those two in order they appeared on users’ timeline:
https://twitter.com/IndianExpress/status/818911398302318592
https://twitter.com/IndianExpress/status/818914213368184833
The articles can also be seen on the “elections” page of The Indian Express, published in quick succession:
For the uninitiated, the Supreme Court of India on 2nd January 2017 had barred political parties from canvassing votes on the basis of caste or religion. Consequently, the Election Commission had said that they will implement the orders of the apex court.
Now here are two political parties – Congress and the BJP – holding special rallies for Dalits in Uttar Pradesh to canvass votes in the upcoming assembly elections that will be held in February and March.
Both the parties are trying to woo voters on caste lines, targeting the same caste group, for the same assembly elections. If this is in contravention of the Supreme Court order, both the parties are guilty.
However, The Indian Express thought it necessary to mention about the SC order only while reporting about the BJP rallies. The Congress rally was reported as a matter of fact, with no editorial comments in the headline. In fact, with a helpful mention of Rohith Vemula.
What should the reader conclude? That when Congress targets a specific caste group, it’s deemed ethical and legal by the Indian Express but when BJP does the same, they feel the saffron party is violating orders of the highest court of India?
Does it not betray the editorial bias of The Indian Express?
It is a shameful fall for a newspaper that had once stood in the forefront when fighting Emergency imposed by the Congress. Late Ramnath Goenka will not be amused by these double standards adopted by the newspaper he founded.
In the recent years, Indian Express has often been accused of being biased towards the Congress party. While Anna’s movement was at peak, the newspaper, then under the editorial leadership of Shekhar Gupta, had published a series of articles attacking members of Team Anna. As a result, Arvind Kejriwal recently attacked Shekhar Gupta as ‘dalaal’ of Congress.
This double standard in reporting was first spotted by Twitter user Neha Srivastava. Although the tweets still exist and so do the articles listed in the archive page (as in the image above), when one clicks on the report about Congress, one is redirected to an altogether different article.
Did they just realise that their bias was way too brazen and removed the article on Congress?