Panel led by former CEC OP Rawat to monitor government advertisements

Former Chief Election Commissioner O. P. Rawat will head a committee that will scrutinise government advertisements for their content and propriety and check that they follow Supreme Court guidelines. The other members are advertising veteran Ramesh Narayan and A. K. Tandon, formerly a member of Prasar Bharati.

The new committee

In a notification issued last week, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said the panel would oversee how the court’s guidelines on regulating the content of government advertising are implemented. Its members were chosen by a three-member selection panel that included Press Council of India chairman C. K. Prasad.

Ramesh Narayan founded Canco Advertising and is Vice-President and Area Director for the Asia-Pacific region of the International Advertising Association. A. K. Tandon has served as media adviser to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Background

In 2015, the Supreme Court told the Centre to set up a three-member committee of people of “unimpeachable neutrality and impartiality” to regulate public advertising. In April 2016, the ministry formed a committee of former Chief Election Commissioner B. B. Tandon, India TV chairman and editor-in-chief Rajat Sharma, and Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director of Ogilvy and Mather for India and South Asia, to ensure the court’s guidelines were followed.

See also: Elections in India

Originally published on 9 December 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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