 "Blackout of NDTV: A time when Vajpayee government refused to ban Jaya TV")
As it becomes increasingly clear with each passing day why Prime Minister Narendra Modi had taken away the Information and Broadcasting Ministry portfolio from Arun Jaitley and given it to M Venkaiah Naidu in the cabinet reshuffle in mid-July, the journalistic world is sharply divided over the daylong blackout of NDTV India and News Time Assam.
Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the India Today group Aroon Purie on Saturday tweeted a paragraph from the statement by the News Broadcasters Standards Authority (NBSA), an independent regulatory body set up by television channels: “Banning channels dangerous weapon in hands of government. Should respect well established self-regulation.”
Subhash Chandra, the chief of Zee Network, tweeted on Sunday demanding a stricter punishment for NDTV India. He said the daylong blackout of the channel’s broadcast was insufficient. “They should have been banned for life for playing with nation’s security,” Chandra tweeted on Sunday afternoon.
Chandra, a Rajya Sabha member who is close to the BJP, defended the government decision. “During the UPA rule, there was a move to ban Zee TV. But NDTV and so called intellectuals had kept quiet, as did the Editors’ Guild,” Chandra said. He also questioned those claiming that there was an unofficial Emergency in place. “Is there no importance of national security,” Chandra asked.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has instructed NDTV India and News Time Assam to not broadcast for a day on November 9. No news television channel, apart from Live News nearly a decade back for running a fake sting, has ever been banned in India. After the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots, the UPA government had issued show cause to Sudarshan TV to explain why it shouldn’t be banned for stoking communal animosity. However, Sudarshan TV wasn't banned.
Old timers remember how there was immense pressure on the Atal Behari Vajpayee government to ban Jaya TV — a news channel run by those close to current Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. There was little love lost between the Bharatiya Janata Party and Jayalalithaa after she had pulled the rug from under the feet of the Vajpayee government by withdrawing support to the barely 13-month old government, forcing mid-term polls in 1999.
Vajpayee-led BJP won enough seats in the 1999 polls to lead yet another coalition government. Jayalalithaa’s rival Dravida Munetra Kazhagam was an ally in the government. It wanted the government to ban Jaya TV because of the cases that the channel’s owner TTV Dinakaran had found himself in.
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However, the then Information and Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, currently the Law Minister, resisted all attempts by the DMK to get Jaya TV banned, including pressure by one of the senior most ministers in the union cabinet. Sources said Vajpayee and his minister were aware that they shouldn’t come across as “dictatorial” and were trying to curb freedom of speech.
Despite several petitions from DMK MPs, Jaya TV wasn't’t banned and Jayalalithaa thanked Prasad for having resisted moves to get the channel banned. “We suffered under the Emergency from 1975 to 1977 and were put in jail. How can people like us impose Emergency. We are democrats,” said a leader.
Meanwhile, journalists will collect at the Press Club of India on Monday afternoon and walk to India Gate to show their solidarity with NDTV.