New Delhi: The Editors’ Guild of India called on the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha chairpersons to remove restrictions on journalists trying to cover proceedings in parliament.
It said that “only a fraction” of the roughly 1,000 mediapersons accredited to cover parliament are granted access to do so and that the process by which this access is given is “without transparent process or procedure”.
The guild added that the practice of restricting mediapersons began during the COVID-19 pandemic but that India has, since then, “fought the scourge and moved on”.
Its letter to Rajya Sabha chairperson and Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar noted that the restrictions were active at a time when the capacity of parliament’s media gallery had been increased.
Writing to Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla, the guild said the House’s press advisory committee, which screens applications for accreditation, “has not been reconstituted for the last few years”.
“That this practice was stopped was stopped when parliament completed [the] 70th year of its existence tells its own story,” the guild continued.
It pointed to how the Inter-Parliamentary Union, of which India is a member, led the development of a self-assessment framework for parliaments in which they are recommended to “guarantee free and unfettered access to its proceedings to the media”.
Last week, Congress MP from Tamil Nadu Manickam Tagore wrote to Birla urging him to consider revoking COVID restrictions on mediapersons trying to cover parliament.
In the last few years, both the Editor’s Guild and the Press Club of India have sought an end to such restrictions.
India has been ranked 159th of 176 countries in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in May. RSF called this position “unworthy of a democracy”.
