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Patna,(BiharTimes): A Press Council of India fact-finding team headed by Rajiv Ranjan Nag will hear the complaints regarding the undeclared Press censorship in Bihar from April 1 to 4.
The Secretary of PCI, Vibha Bhargava, has written a letter to the Chief Secretary, Home Secretary and Director, Public Relations Department to cooperate with the team. |
The team would submit its report to the Press Council of India chairman, Justice (Retired) Markandey Katju.
Justice Katju had on Feb 24 last, while taking part in Patna, strongly criticized the Nitish government for harassing journalists, getting them sacked and stopping advertisements of the newspapers, which publish stories without accepting the government’s diktat.
The other two members of the team are Arun Kumar of the Patna Edition of The Times of India Patna, who is also a member of the PCI, and Kalyan Baruah of Assam Tribune. However, several senior journalists of the state are of the view that it would be really difficult for any journalist working on the payroll to appear in the hearing and frankly say something about the situation in Bihar.
The moment s/he approaches the fact-finding team s/he may be shown the door. In such a situation what type of guarantee the fact-facting team is going to give to them, they ask. If the state government comes to know about any such journalists––and there is every likelihood that the names would be known––it would once again apply pressure on that particular newspaper to get rid of those scribes. One of the journalists told BiharTimes that Justice Katju may end up knowing nothing more than what he is knowing now. Instead of such open hearing the Press Council of India should adopt some other strategy to seek information about the situation here.
Now that Justice Katju had created hype all eyes are on him. Had he constituted such team earlier and that too without much clamour he might have succeeded in knowing something more.
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