The Editors Guild of India has kept in touch with the top of the Press Information Bureau (PIB), encouraging him to pull out the new certification rules presented by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry on February 7. The Guild said many arrangements to pull out the authorization of a columnist were “inconsistent and with next to no fair treatment of regulation”.
“We are amazed that the new rules have been given with practically no conferences with press associations and media bodies. Subsequently, the rules neglect to offer clearness and smoothing out, and on second thought force one-sided, grave and erratic circumstances upon writers. Under the rules, columnists will go under the thumb of the police, and this will chillingly affect announcing and debilitate the autonomy of the press media,” it said in the letter.
Written to PIB’s Principal Director General Jaideep Bhatnagar, the letter expressed that the new rules “present reason for suspension/withdrawal of license” assuming a columnist has acted in a way biased to the power and uprightness of India, the security of State, cordial relations with unfamiliar states, public request, conventionality or profound quality or according to scorn of court, maligning or instigation to an offense.
“This is erratic and abuses fair treatment of the law for the accompanying reasons: (I) it doesn’t accommodate a mediating position to settle on suspension, (ii) needs procedural shields of right of hearing, recording of reasons, arrangement of allure, and so on; and (iii) is a lopsided and inappropriate discipline for activities that as of now have existing cures in regulation.”
It added that any choice “made under the said sub-statement disregards the standard of partition of abilities” and will “debilitate the activity of basic freedoms for writers.” It said, “this flags a plan to pulverize contradict, and just give certification to malleable and supportive of government columnists”.
It likewise brought up that the rules “don’t give any cure or right of interest for writers whose certification has been dismissed”.
On February 11, five media bodies had kept in touch with Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur in regards to something similar.
