(REOPENS DEL56)

The Press Council team said that it was informed that a senior officer in the Directorate of information and publicity, had even sent letters of instructions to local newspapers saying that the ministers concerned were unhappy over the news being not fully published in positive manner. The PCI team also said that even the Right to Information Act seemed to be ineffective in Bihar as Information officers allegedly do not give information to journalists and various sections of the society giving reasons that the information could be used as news. All the government advertisements should be released through this independent ad-agency. Such committee should have adequate representations from small and medium newspaper and vernacular language papers, the committee said. It also noted that several newspapers were publishing without proper registration and sought a judicial inquiry against them.