Media bodies, Cong flay FIRs against journalists

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 30

Media organisations on Saturday held a meeting to condemn the recent fling of FIRs under stringent sections including sedition against journalists and said even during the emergency Section 124 A was not invoked.

The Editors Guild of India, the Press Club of India, the Indian Women’s Press Corps, the Delhi Union of Journalists and Indian Journalists Union attended the meeting and flayed the FIR against Rajdeep Sardesai, Mrinal Pande, Zafar Agha, Paresh Nath, Anant Nath, and Vinod K Jose at Noida’s Sector 20 police station.

“Even during the Emergency, rules against journalists were not so harsh and I don’t recall anybody going in for sedition,” said PCI president Anand Sahay.

Sahay also cited action against Siddique Kappan from Kerala, Kishore Chandra Wangkhem from Manipur, Dhaval Patel from Gujarat, Rahul Kulkarni from Maharashtra, and Vinod Dua.

President of Editors Guild Seema Mustafa said the government’s action against journalists was an attempt to “intimidate and harass.”

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala in a statement said the Centre was hell-bent on brutally and blatantly silencing every contrarian or dissenting voice by hook or by crook. “The Centre seems to be exceeding the over reach of even the dacronian Press Act of 1910 and the Rowlatt Act of 1919. The FIR filed against senior Journalists and editors and a Congress MP is a clear cut instance of strangulating democracy by the BJP and its leaders.”