The confrontation between information and broadcasting (I&B) minister Smriti Irani and Prasar Bharati chairman A Surya Prakash is no longer a rumour. It is a fact. It is not, therefore, a liberal-right-winger battle.

Mr Prakash has made it clear in a media interview that he has ideological affinity with the BJP government and rapport with top leaders in the governing party, and that it goes back to the Indira Gandhi-imposed Emergency of June 1975-January 1977. It cannot be dismissed as an inconsequential turf battle between the broadcaster and the ministry, or a turf battle between two personalities, the I&B minister and the chairman. And it is not a mere inside skirmish.

What are the issues at stake? Is it the independence of Prasar Bharati and that of Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR)? Not really. Mr Prakash is a fiercely independent journalist who honed his journalist credo with The Indian Express under the feisty owner Ram Nath Goenka, the man who supported the political opposition and opposed the Congress under Indira Gandhi tooth and nail.

The old Goenka’s anti-establishment credentials really boiled down to the anti-Congress-ism of the political opposition of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which was lucidly articulated by then Indian Express editor Frank Moraes, in his front-page articles with the tagline “Myth and Reality”.

The present-day BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi carries that anti-Congress aggression which Mr Prakash shares. Ms Irani is clearly a new-entrant because she joined the party only in 2004, 40 years after the turbulent relationship between the Indira Gandhi-led Congress and Jayaprakash Narayan-led political opposition. But she is aggressively anti-Congress, as any other BJP leader and even more. So, what is the fight between Ms Irani and Mr Prakash all about?

Clearly Ms Irani has authority over all that falls within her ministry’s jurisdiction, and will want to use the public broadcaster to promote the government’s policies, programmes and achievements for the 2019 election. It would not be too wide off the mark to infer that PM Modi allocated the I&B portfolio to her with the expectation that she will use the public broadcaster as an instrument to publicise the BJP’s positive policies.

On his part, Mr Prakash is not asserting absolute independence of the public broadcaster, which would imply that DD and AIR would fearlessly criticise the Modi’s government’s failures and follies even as they take note of its successes and achievements. As a professional journalist he wants to maintain the outward objectivity of news coverage to establish the credibility of the public broadcaster. And quoting the Prasar Bharati Act, under his leadership, neither DD nor AIR are likely to criticise the Modi government the way British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had criticised then Conservative UK PM Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands war in 1982.

DD and AIR are not even on the verge of committing that kind of heresy. But Mr Prakash is ideologically committed to the idea of Prasar Bharati being a public broadcaster and not a state broadcaster though the dividing line between the two could be so thin as to be non-existent. That comes from his cussedness of having been a journalist himself.

The idea that DD and AIR should be out of state control has burnt itself into the minds of all opposition political leaders of the 1990s. Though the Janata Party government had set up the BG Verghese committee and the autonomous public broadcaster was mooted, the party with Mr LK Advani as I&B minister could not push through because it was a short-lived government.

It was during the National Front government of VP Singh, with Telugu Desam Party’s P Upendra as I&B minister in 1989, that the Prasar Bharati Bill was passed, but it was only the United Front government of PM Deve Gowda with Mr S Jaipal Reddy as I&B minister that notified the Prasar Bharati Act in 1997.

It is one of the delightful political ironies that right-wingers found themselves arrayed against Indira Gandhi’s statist authoritarianism. It is a known fact that BJP leaders love a strong state because in conformity with their right-wing ideology, they believe a strong nation is best symbolised in a state armed to its teeth.

Mr Prakash, when he was first appointed as the chief of the public broadcaster in 2014, had made it clear to this writer in an interview that he saw no conflict between the government of the day and the media, unlike in the 1970s, because the situation has changed and that the two are on the same side, wishing that India become prosperous and powerful.

He had emphasised at the same time the independence of the public broadcaster as an article of faith because he and his friends in the BJP had suffered the brunt of state-controlled media during the Emergency. Of course, it was a delicate balancing act where the public broadcaster toes the government line because it believes in the government’s programme and credo and not because it is coerced to fall in line. Today’s opposition is likely to question the claims of objectivity of DD and AIR between 2014 and now, though the Congress has little moral right to mount criticism on this count.

It would however be a significant development if Mr Prakash wins the battle for the public broadcaster, because then DD and AIR would have moved, however imperceptibly, towards an independent, professionally managed corporation and no minister in the government dare use it as the government’s agent.

It is possible that Mr Modi may be inclined to support Ms Irani because the political establishment would not like to lose face to journalists, even if those journalists do not happen to be opposing the government.