PM to attend function on the occasion of National Press Day

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will tomorrow attend a function on the occasion of National Press Day during which Press Council of India (PCI) will confer excellence in journalism awards, including ‘Raja Ram Mohan Roy Award’ to veteran journalist S Nihal Singh.

Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of State for I&B Rajayvardhan Singh Rathore will also attend the event which also coincides with Golden Jubilee of PCI.

Renjith John of Deepika Daily (Kerala) has bagged the award of ‘Rural Journalism and Development Reporting’, while in the same category ‘Special Mention Certificate’ has been jointly given to freelancer Arvind Kumar Singh and X Xavier Selvakumar of Danamilar (Coimbatore), PCI Chairman C K Prasad said.

While no entry could qualify for the ‘Investigative Journalism’, T P Dhanesh of Malayalam Manorama (Kerala) and Pritam Bandyopadhyay (Asian Age-New Delhi) have been jointly selected in the ‘Single News Picture Category’ for Photo Journalism and Vijay Verma of The Press Trust of India (PTI) got the ‘Special Mention Certificate’ in the same category.

Renuka Puri of Indian Express has won the award in the category of ‘Photo Journalism (Photo Feature), while Baiju Poulose of Malayalam Manorama (Kerala) has been chosen for main award in the category of ‘Best Newspapers Art: Covering Cartoons, Caricatures and Illustrations’ and in the same category Rohit Jose (Malayalam Manorama) has been chosen for ‘Special Mention Certificate’.

Delegation from a number of countries like Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka will also attend the function, while Afghanistan and Bhutan are expected to be represented by their embassies since they do not have press/media council, Prasad said.

However, Pakistan is likely to skip the function amid the tension between the two nations.

“We had send the invitation in July…but we are not sure about its participation,” Prasad said.

A PCI member said three Members of Parliament — G Hari of AIADMK, Satyavrat Chaturvedi of Congress, Pratap Simha of BJP– ceased to the PCI members after they consecutively missed three meetings.

Prasad said one of the main feature of the golden jubilee function is the first “concrete step” to form an alliance of all press/media councils of the South Asian countries.

“The alliance would be headquartered in New Delhi and would promote peace, fair and fearless journalism in the region. Soon the alliance will be extended to South East Asia and other regions of the Sub-continent,” he said.

A draft constitution and a draft MoU have already been circulated among the member states earlier and has been welcomed by them, he said, adding that a structured meeting will be held on this issue after the delegation.

Stressing that a large number of cases which were pending from several years have been cleared by the PCI, he said as of today only 282 cases are pending out of which 200 cases are those which have been filed after April 1 this year.

Prasad also expressed hope that government will soon bring electronic and other media under the ambit of the PCI, adding it was a long standing demand from the media fraternity.

He also highlighted various cases, involving VIPs, that were dissolved by the PCI.

PTI