RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Bihar Government should create conducive environment for practice of free and fair journalism in the State.

2. Review of all cases pending against journalists in the State by an independent judicial commission.

3. Government of Bihar should ensure safety of journalists and the State Government should extend all possible help in discharge of their professional duties.

4. A mechanism should be set up for regular interaction between the district administration, police with the local journalists to sort out conflicts.

5. Accreditation policy should be reviewed in consultations with journalists.

6. Hearing of cases pending against journalists in Labour Department should be fast tracked.

7. Labour department should take cognizance of complaints lodged by journalists against the management of the newspaper.

8. Introduction of free health care scheme for the journalists and their dependent.

9. Review of the State Government Advertisement Policy 2008 and constitution of an independent agency to release advertisements to news -paper houses strictly on basis of guidelines. All the government advertisements should be released through this independent ad-agency. Such committee should have adequate representations from small and medium newspaper and vernacular language papers.

10. Complaints of small and medium newspapers regarding issue of advertisements should be given due weightage and efforts should be made to redress their grievances in a fair manner without further delay.

11. Bihar Add committee should be headed by a non-government representative.

12. Decentralisation of distribution of government advertisement to district level.

13. A judicial inquiry should ordered against the newspaper publications, which are publishing without proper RNI registration and efforts should be made to recover the amount given to the such publications under Public Demand Recovery Act and no fresh advertisements should be issued to such unregistered publications.