Anita Saluja’s Committed Journalism ?

Dear Sir,

Reference Anita Saluja’s – “ Prove PAC Report Not Fact-Based ” – (TNIE – 30 Apr).

Anita Saluja’s ‘very secular’ credentials (read as: anti-hindu, anti-BJP) are well known to any discerning reader of your paper !! It comes in various forms of ‘camouflage’ & ‘gloss-overs’ !! In the present report, she has gone at great lengths to give ‘bits & pieces’ of Yashwant Sinha’s press conference !! And, then to bring in a measure of ‘secular balancing’ she wrote :
” Meanwhile the Congress on Friday dismissed BJP’s charges that replacing Joshi as PAC Chairman with Saifuddin Soz was ‘undemocratic’, saying a note of dissent was a process in  a democratic system”.

What ‘she doesn’t say’, the reader had to look elsewhere to get the correct perspective !!

For example, a report by the news agency – IANS, and carried in the Delhi based English daily – The Pioneer – informs the reader the following, from the ‘very same’ Yashwant Sinha press conference:

(a) – ” PAC is a committee of the Lok Sabha, only a Lok Sabha member and a member of main opposition party can be its head. Soz, a member of the Rajya Sabha, from the ruling party, was elected the chairman, Sinha said.”

(b) – ” But Sinha said those who objected have not read the rules. In other committees, we give a chance to other members to ask questions first, but in the PAC, it’s clearly written that the chairman puts the questions in the first instance. Thereafter opportunity is given to other members. Those who object (asking) why Joshi asked the question first have not studied the rules, he said”.

(c) – ” Sinha rubbished all charges from the Congress and DMK members about “outsourcing” of the report and that it had been prepared unilaterally by PAC Chairperson M M Joshi. The Lok Sabha Secretariat prepares the PAC report. It is prepared in stages. The Hindi version of the report clearly states that only the Law Secretary was examined on April 15. A clerical error has been blown out of proportion, he said “.

(REF: http://www.dailypioneer.com/335220/PAC-has-become-a-joke-BJP.html )

Nowhere does one find this information in your paper !! A case of ‘selective amnesia’? I rest my case Sir !!

To borrow a phrase from the Indira Gandhi era of ‘committed judiciary’, here’s to ‘committed journalism’ in the era of her daughter-in-law !!

And to think it was your paper that kept the flames of democracy burning bright in those dark days of 1975, and kept the Editorial space ‘BLANK’ !! Time certainly changes people & traditions – for the worse?? !! JAI HO !!

VANDE MATARAM

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