How successive Indian governments have been monitoring the media

In his autobiography, Lucknow Boy, the late Vinod Mehta, Outlook magazine’s founding editor, has written about how 700-odd income tax officials swooped down on the offices of the Raheja group, promoters of Outlook magazine. The raids, conducted in 2001 across 12 cities, including Outlook's Mumbai office, came some weeks after the magazine had reported on then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's foster son-in-law, Ranjan Bhattacharya, and his influence in the PMO, Mehta writes.

The excesses of the Emergency on the media for 19 months, from June 26, 1975 to early 1977, during the Indira Gandhi years, have been well documented.