As of last month, there were 925 projects with an anticipated investment of Rs 13.25 lakh crore that had been marked as ‘implementation stalled’ on Private Economic Databases (PEDs). (In picture: PM Narendra Modi)
The opposition Tuesday strongly criticised the central government over the Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s guidelines on “fake news”, with the Congress alleging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party were the principal beneficiaries of fake news.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the I&B circular “is a brazen attempt to curb press freedom, a sure sign that the government has lost its way”, while CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury said his party condemned the “duplicitous move of the Modi government where in the garb of fake news, it will attack all the news it finds uncomfortable”.
The Prime Minister on Tuesday ordered withdrawal of the new rules, but the Congress said it would not believe that the decision did not have the Prime Minister’s approval, and argued the government may have been testing the waters. Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted, “Sensing mounting anger on the “fake news” notification, the PM orders a U-Turn on his own order. One can clearly see a loss of control and panic setting in now. #BasEkAurSaal”
Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said the government’s mindset was that only its own views should reach the people. “The BJP and RSS and the PM are the beneficiaries of fake news. They know more about fake news than perhaps any leader in the world, any government in the world,” he said at a press conference. Echoing the Congress’s views, Banerjee tweeted,”What about #FakeNews spread by a political party on a regular basis?”
“We are living in a time not of parliamentary democracy, but (of an) authoritarian Prime Minister. So surely he was in the know of it. If the PM says he and the PMO was not aware of what the I&B Minister was doing, we will be surprised. It is upon perhaps a realisation of another backlash that would have built up throughout the country… that they made a hasty retreat. The PM has not obliged the media. The PM is the principal beneficiary of fake news,” Sharma added.
Asked if the Congress believed the government was testing the waters, he said, “Yes. But the timing went wrong. Yesterday there was an outrage on Dalit atrocities. Now they are clamping down on the media.” Sharma said the government’s mindset was that only its own views should reach the people, adding that the BJP has an “industry” that creates and propagates fake news.
“Fascism reaches its ‘nadir’ as a shaky Modi Government, caught in its web of lies, seeks to muzzle all independent voices in media through fallacious rules! Will the 13 Union Ministers answer for the lame duck portal tarnishing mainstream media?” Congress communication department head Randeep Surjewala tweeted. Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel asked whether the move was an attempt to prevent reporters from reporting news uncomfortable to the establishment. He asked who would determine whether a news was fake and wondered if the rules were to be misused to harass reporters.
Yechury and his party colleague and Lok Sabha MP Mohammad Salim recalled the Emergency days. “It is like an undeclared Emergency. The government wants to gag the press. They want the press to write what the government wants,” Salim said.
The AAP, too, hit out at the government. “Till now there was an informal emergency on media, except few all were scared, and fell in line. Now formal emergency. Who is govt to regulate press? And will journalists raise their voice against this draconian rule? Like they did against Rajiv Gandhi on defamation law ? I doubt!!,” AAP leader Ashutosh tweeted.