Reactions to the ban on 'Aaj Ki Awaz'

It’s not me alone, but the people seem to have taken cognizance of ban on ‘Aaj Ki Awaz’-a local news programme and are discussing about it in a forum and even started an online petition campaign to lift the ban on press.

Also, the local media too seem to have taken notice of the ban and has raised their voice, though meekly and in an indirect way.

The editor of the local daily ‘Arunachal Front’, Pradeep Kumar, in the ‘Beyond the Horizon’ column of it’s June 2^nd issue, taking a dig at the apathy shown by the authorities towards the local electronic media has lamented the Prashar Bharti and Union Information & Broadcasting Minister, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi for not being able to start a local news bulletin at DD Itanagar, even after the latter’s promise to start within 15 days time. Though he was not directly referring to ‘Aaj Ki Awaz’, but what I felt was, he was taking a dig at authorities through Doordarshan and ‘News and Views’.

“Though Doordarshan has a huge establishment here with 100-odd staff members on its pay roll, it has failed to start a local news bulletin despite the costly equipments commissioned in 1993 getting rusted day by day.

For a few years it broadcast, privately produced news capsule ‘News and Views’ whose producer Taro Chatung became a household name but it was discontinued abruptly since May 2005 for reasons best known to New Delhi mandarins.”

Further he goes on to say that 'Doordarshan’s dog in manger policy has left the Arunachalees high and dry in an age of proliferation of audio visual medium of communication and that DD has no right to deprive people of Arunachal Pradesh to go without news and a peculiar situation has arisen where people of Arunachal are bombarded with global news but are deprived of the information on what is happening in their own state’.

Rightly said, neither DD nor the local authority has the right to deprive people of the information on what is happening in the state. What do you say?