CHANDIGARH: Newspapers here are under the close surveillance of officials who decide what should be carried, and barge into newsrooms to ensure that their dictates are followed.
Last Wednesday, officials demanded that a prominent local daily, The Tribune, delete a news item on the call for a Punjab bandh. Protests by newsmen were brushed aside and the first edition of the paper had a blank space where the item should have appeared.
Later however, after hectic deliberations at the top, the embarrassed officials realized that the report was about the Akali Dals ‘and not the militants. So subsequent editions were allowed to carry the news.
‘Such intrusions are “not very frequent” according to newspaper staff, but official eyes are forever peeled in the newsroom.
A senior Chandigarh administration official said there is no ‘censorship. “But mi not be allowed to use newspapers to disseminate their message,” he said
The squeeze is much tighter in Jalandhar where even junior officials can enforce their whims. Ajit, the largest circulated Punjabi daily, often carries blank spaces ‘where news items have been deleted.
Over a week ago more than 50,000 copies of the newspaper were seized as a report about the Babbar Khalsa militant group was published.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 28, 1992
