PM’s picture on emails it isn’t supposed to be on, yet again
For the second time in five days, a picture of the prime minister and his government’s slogan was found appended to outgoing emails of a non-government-linked institution, this time the National Human Rights Commission.
A few days after receiving a rap from the Supreme Court, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) is at it again. It has again surreptitiously inserted a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his “Sabka saath” slogan on the footer of outgoing emails of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
The NHRC is an autonomous body and therefore, the picture of the prime minister or of anyone connected with the government has no place in its emails (or letters, for that matter). In fact, the Union and state governments were the biggest litigants before the rights watchdog, which take up thousands of cases relating to human rights violations by the government and its instrumentalities every year.
This pernicious act came out after one of the receivers of an email from the organisation, which happens to be a leading Kolkata-based media house, reported about it on Friday.
It had received an email on Wednesday evening, which contained a copy of a media release by the commission and was emailed by Jaimini Kumar Srivastava, NHRC deputy director (media and communications).
The footer contained a picture of the prime minister and his government’s slogan, ‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas, sabka prayas’ (‘Together with all, development of all, trust of all and effort by all’).
According to the report, when the media house reported about the email to a senior official of the rights watchdog, the latter was aghast and said would immediately inform the chairman, Arun Mishra, former Supreme Court judge, about it.
Not only the email, even the moving band of graphics on top of the home page of the NHRC’s official website showed a photo of the prime minister, but with a different slogan, ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, which promotes the official celebrations for the 75th anniversary of independence.
Now, the thing is, according to the official who spoke to the media house, as per its report, the picture and slogan are not visible to the person sending out the email. It is visible only to the receiver.
The same was the case with the Supreme Court’s outgoing email earlier. Hence, unless a person complains about the issue, there is no way for the sender(s) to know this.
This is the second time in the last five days that the trickery has been noticed. So, the question naturally arises, are there other autonomous or independent organisations whose outgoing emails have been appended with the image of the prime minister and the slogan, since the NIC maintains the electronic communication infrastructure of most government organisations? And as a corollary, is the government furtively trying to undermine the independence of such organisations?
With the 75th-anniversary celebrations of India’s independence coming up next year, what legacy is the Modi government trying to leave?
