WSN Service

CHANDIGARH: A section of the print media which tries to balance its reporting on Punjab is now under pressure from the State’s military Governor. In this connection Punjab’s largest circulating Punjabi daily Ajeet on Jan 27 front paged a notice intimating its readers that pressure was put on the editor of the paper that news regarding the militant-sponsored bandh on January 26 should not be published.

The paper further revealed that the management received telephone calls conveying verbally messages from the “top” that a Magistrate would have to be posted to the office of Ajeet in the event of its publishing news about the anti-Indian strike call by the militants led by Baba Gurbachan Singh Manochahal and his Panthic Committee.

Earlier the Chandigarh administration registered a criminal case against the newspaper’s editor for publishing a story regarding militants directions to the Chandigarh administration to introduce Punjabi language in the Union territory failing which senior officers will have to bear the consequences. A similar criminal case was also registered against Delhi’s Times of India. Later Governor Malhotra directed the administration to withdraw the cases against the two newspapers.

However it is being freely mentioned that the managements of The Tribune and Indian Express are whole heartedly cooperating with the government in curbing the pro-militant news in their respective newspapers. These newspapers particularly the Brahaman dominated The Tribune have been making a lot of noise about the police raids on their establishments but actually according to insiders these raids have been maneuvered so that a message is Sent to militants that the government is trying to intimidate the editors of the two newspapers and that the government alone is responsible for the poor or no coverage of the militant views by them.

It appears that the Press Council of India’s recent move to send a team headed by former Indian Express editor B.G Verghese to Punjab to hear grievances of Hindu journalists regarding the alleged militant pressure on the media has been used by the Punjab administration to encourage the Hindu media to defy the militants and to give more powers to the police to raid non-confirming sections of the media such as Ajeet and The Times of India.

Article extracted from this publication >> February 1, 1991