With this petition:

 

• We strongly condemn the BBC for failing to meet the highest standards of editorial impartiality in its two-part documentary “India: The Modi Question”;
 

• We call upon the BBC Board to conduct an independent investigation into this serious breach of its duties as a public service broadcaster and publish the findings in full;
 

• We urge OFCOM, as the independent regulator of the BBC, to hold the organisation to account for its repeated failures to secure content standards which command the trust of license-fee paying audiences; and
 

• We request OFCOM to discuss any necessary corrections and clarifications with the BBC as part of its regular meetings with the broadcaster on the “Impartiality and Editorial Standards Action Plan” and “Serota Review”.
 

Rationale and background to this collective mass complaint:

 

The BBC's two-part documentary on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure as Gujarat Chief Minister during a spate of riots in 2002 is yet another example of agenda driven reporting and institutional bias that now characterises this once globally respected organisation. The timing for airing, some 21 years later, a so-called investigative report that has nothing new in it, but only shoehorns old allegations to fit the producers clearly predetermined conclusions in itself speaks volumes. 

 

Inexplicably, it comes at a time when India’s Supreme Court has, after a lengthy investigation and due process, completely absolved Prime Minister Modi from the very same allegations of complicity in the 2002 riots that the BBC now seeks to rake up after more than two decades.

 

Indeed, the programme itself reflects a hesitancy about the legal credibility of the accusations it serves up, repeatedly using words such as “allegedly” and "reportedly” without furnishing even a shred of credible new evidence.  Thisclearly only underlines the agenda driven and distorted narrative that the producers have attempted to peddle. 

 

In contrast, Prime Minister Modi, as the (repeatedly) elected leader of the world's largest democracy, is credited for large scale social and financial inclusion programmes which have benefited tens of millions of India’s most vulnerable regardless of religion, caste, gender, or region. 

 

Impartiality is one of the core tenets of ethical journalism and is enshrined in the BBC Charter.  It is also incumbent of a media organisation with such global reach to avoid provoking social tensions.  And in this globalised era, it is reasonably foreseeable that such a provocative programme hinged on flimsy grounds could have implications far beyond South Asia. The BBC has therefore fallen abysmally short of the standards expected of a public service broadcaster by exercising its editorial freedom so irresponsibly.  

 

With this petition we strongly condemn the BBC for what is nothing but a piece of sinister propaganda journalism that deliberately misinforms its viewers.