Indian Govt attacked

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34046, 9 January 1976, Page 9

Indian Govt attacked

(N.Z.P A.-Reuter —Copyright) NEW DELHI, Jan. 8. The Indian Government has come under renewed attack in Parliament over the continuation of the emergency, gaoling of Opposition leaders and stringent censorship curbs on Parliamentary and general reporting in the press.

But, in a strong defence of Government action, the Steel and Mines Minister (Mr Chandrajit Yadav) told the Lower House that the country had entered a new era of peace and progress after the emergency was proclaimed last June. Indian democracy would have been in peril if the Prime Minister (Mrs Gandhi) had not moved in time, he said, and called Mrs Gandhi’s action in ordering the emergency a great act of patriotism. Mr Brahmanand Panda, a Congress Party member, said in the Upper House that the censor was there only to trim the news. The emergency had been proclaimed because democracy was “being throttled in the legislative assemblies and lynched on the streets” before June, he said.

The strongest attack of the day on the Government came from Mr Somnath Chatterjee of the Marxist Communist Party who ac-

cused Mrs Gandhi of being a dictator and said everything had been done under the emergency to suit one individual. He said all domestic and people’s movements had been quashed, the press had been gagged and a fear psychosis had been created. The Government told Parliament it was considering merging the country’s two national news agencies into a single press service. The Information Minister (Mr V. C. Shukla) gave no details of the proposed merger in his brief written reply during the Parliamentary question hour, but authoritative sources said the Government has decided to press for the amalgamation of the two private agencies.

The Government’s position has been that India should have only one economically viable news agency, eliminating competition and duplication of services by Press Trust of India and United News of India.

To back up its claim that the existing agencies are financially weak, the Information Minister told Parliament that U.N.I. owes the Posts and Telegraph Department about $62,400 in back bills for telephones, press telegrams and teleprinter circuits, and that P.T.I. owes about $14,000. Critics of the merger proposal have charged that the planned amalgamation is part of the Government’s efforts to control the press further, and that the two agencies have the financial I

strength to be economically viable. Both agencies are managed by boards of directors drawn from the managements of subscriber newspapers. There has been no indication as to who would run the proposed single agency, but the Government itself has been active in drawing up various proposals for the new organisation.