The irony was hard to miss. Thirty-three years to this day came the moment often referred to as Indian democracy’s darkest hour — the proclamation of Emergency.
HYDERABAD: The irony was hard to miss. Thirty-three years to this day came the moment often referred to as Indian democracy’s darkest hour — the proclamation of Emergency.
On Wednesday, as the country remembered June 25, 1975, Hyderabad awoke to news of the arrests of K Srinivas, editor of Telugu daily Andhra Jyoti, and two of its reporters Vamsi and Srinivas on Tuesday night, in connection with a case filed against them by the Scheduled Caste Association, the Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti (MRPS). They were produced before the 6th metropolitan magistrate who remanded all of them to judicial custody till July 8, for violation of section 3(1)(10) of the SC/ST (Atrocities and Protection) Act.
The arrested scribes allegedly participated in a dharna against dalit leaders of the MRPS which had attacked the newspaper office. During the dharna, slogans were raised and an effigy of the MRPS leader garlanded with chappals.
Journalists across the state boycotted official functions on Wednesday in protest and staged a walkout from the official briefing on the incident by state home minister K Jana Reddy and information minister Anam Ramnarayan Reddy.
Though chief minister YS Rajasekahra Reddy was just two floors away in the same complex in the secretariat and kept monitoring the developments, he did not offer to meet the scribes’ associations or their leaders.
The government insisted there was no high-handedness in arresting the editor. “We have acted after complete and detailed investigations. We are ready for a CID report as well,” Jana Reddy said in a statement.
Editors of all Telugu and Urdu newspapers called upon the arrested scribes at the Chanchalaguda jail on Wednesday morning and condemned the late-night arrests. “It was aimed at keeping them behind bars for atleast 24 hours,” said Ramachandramurthy, a former editor of Andhra Jyoti.
The journalists’ associations plan to file bail petition for the three before the Andhra Pradesh high court on Thursday.
What evokes the parallels to the Emergency is the fact that the arrests are believed to be a culmination of a tussle between the YSR administration and the fourth estate in the state.
A majority of senior editors voiced their concern on the fact that the YSR government was very intolerant towards criticism in the media.
Hostilities began with police and judicial action against the Eenadu group and its parent unit Margadarshi Financiers by Congress MP Vundavalli Arun Kumar. The government later blacklisted Eenadu and Andhra Jyoti for advertisements, to tackle criticism. Two years back, the district collector of Visakhapatnam slapped closure orders on a local edition of Andhra Jyoti.
On another occasion, three journalists from Kurnool were arrested for exposing the scam in selecting beneficiaries of Indiramma housing programme.
Bitterness between Telugu papers and the government increased ever since the CM’s son Jaganmohan Reddy launched his own newspaper, Sakshi.
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