Who is the owner of the British Broadcasting Corporation? A look back at Indian BBC scandals

An enormous political outcry was caused in India with the airing of the contentious BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots and the purported connections to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which pitted the opposition parties against the ruling coalition.

The Modi-led Centre ordered YouTube and Twitter to restrict handles and accounts that are disseminating snippets and links from the two-part BBC documentary "India: The Modi Question" in order to prevent its airing throughout the nation.

The BBC documentary was banned, and the opposition has criticised the Centre and BJP over it, accusing them of censorship. The BBC project's contents were criticised by the Ministry of External Affairs, which labelled the programme as propaganda.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is owned by who? learn how it operates

In the United Kingdom, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a publically owned and supported broadcasting system. The Royal Charter, a declaration of incorporation given by the current monarch, governs how the BBC is run.

Therefore, the BBC's operations are associated with the British government and monarchy, and it has been mandated to "provide properly accurate and unbiased news, current events, and factual programming to enhance people's awareness of all regions of the United Kingdom and the rest of the globe."

Past disputes over Indian concerns at the BBC

Following their broadcast on British television, the documentaries Calcutta and Phantom India, both produced by the BBC in the 1970s, caused a significant uproar in India. The documentary included various satirical skits of Indian daily life that painted a derogatory picture of the nation.

This resulted in a significant outcry from the Indian diaspora in Britain, and the Congress-led central government banned BBC in India until 1972. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi proclaimed an Emergency in 1975, BBC was ejected for the second time.

The BBC caused controversy in India a second time in 2008 when a panoramic programme depicting child labour was shown on the network. The Indian government reacted strongly to this, and the news was ultimately shown to be false.

According to reports, false film of kids sewing clothing and working in sweatshops was used by an investigative reporting programme to portray India negatively.