Journalists’ Protection Law Panel Swept Under Carpet After One Meet | The News Minute
Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The demand for Journalists’ Protection Law has intensified after the illegal police action against journalist Kuldeep Singoria in Bhopal on Tuesday. The then chief minister and now Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced setting up of a committee before the assembly election on September 20, 2023.
A notification for the committee was issued on September 25 the same year. Additional chief secretary (Home) was made the chairman of the committee consisting of Principal Secretary (PS) (law), Secretary Public Relations Department, a representative of Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Communication, Bhopal, and a senior journalist.
The government nominated a senior journalist Mahesh Shrivastava as member of the committee. After its formation, only one meeting of the committee was held before the assembly election. Then the committee was swept under the carpet. The Model Code of Conduct (MCC) was placed after the meeting of the committee.
Although the election was over and the MCC was withdrawn, the committee never met again. Shrivastava said there had been only one meeting of the committee. In the past 16 months, neither the committee held any meeting nor anyone from the government contacted its members.
In the meeting, the members of the committee said the Journalists’ Protection Act should be studied by bringing it from the states where it was implemented, Shrivastava said. He said he had sought a copy of the Act implemented in Maharashtra, so that MP might draft the law on the pattern of it.
But the copy of the Act implemented in Maharashtra is still to be available to him, he said. In the past, a journalist was stripped of his clothes in police custody in Sidhi. A video in which a mining officer was seen beating up a journalist went viral. In Rajgarh, a YouTube reporter was shot in the head and killed. Such incidents are regularly taking place in the state.
Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra has passed this Act
Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh are such states where Journalists’ Protection Act was implemented. The Act was made before the Vidhan Sabha election in Chhattisgarh. The organisations associated with the journalists have been demanding implementation of the Journalists’ Protection Act for a long
