Press Censorship: TOI takes down an article the BJP finds embarrassing

by Guest Thu Sep 28, 2017 12:56 pm

New Delhi: A story carried by the Times of India‘s Jaipur edition criticising the Narendra Modi government’s Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana on September 14, 2017, was taken down from the newspaper’s website within hours of publishing.

The story by Rosamma Thomas reported how the scheme, which was hailed as a “safety shield” for farmers, has turned out to be just another way of the government taking Rajasthan’s hapless farmers for a ride.

Launched in 2016, Modi government’s scheme has so far largely benefitted the insurance companies, which, thanks to high premiums and unpaid claims, logged profits of nearly Rs 10,000 crore till April, according to the office of the Comptroller and Auditor general (CAG) and the non-government Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

“The deduction was made without warning. The bank had no clue about what I had sown. Moreover, Rs 1,718 has been deducted as “inspection charges” though no one came for inspection. To top it [all], the premium has been deducted when the crops were safe and beyond the risk period. My crop was uninsured for 80% of the crop cycle, when the risk was at the highest. The premium has now been deducted for the full period,” a farmer who cultivates cotton and guar in equal halves in his 15-bigha farm told TOI. In July 31 this year, Rs 7,827 was deducted from his SBI account as premium for crop insurance...

This isn’t the first time the TOI website has taken down a story carried by the print edition. In July, a story published by the TOI’s Ahmedabad edition about an apparent increase of “300%” in BJP president Amit Shah’s assets over the past five years was removed from the the newspaper’s website within hours of being published. While the BJP issued a statement about the asset increase after being slammed by the Opposition for getting the story removed, no explanation was ever given by the newspaper for pulling the plug on the news item from its website.

The Wire had also reported that TOI decided to delete its tweets and Facebook posts alerting readers to another story involving Smriti Irani: ‘PIL accuses Smriti Irani of fraud in MPLAD funds’. Irani is believed to have objected to the story, which appeared on July 27, 2017.

Meanwhile, sources at the TOI in Delhi said the decision to pull the Rajasthan crop insurance story was taken byexecutive editor Diwakar Asthana even though the revisions that he had himself suggested were incorporated. Despite multiple attempts by The Wire, Diwakar remained unreachable.

Asthana is no stranger to controversy. A leaked WhatsApp message in June revealed the extent of collusion between TOI editors and the Narendra Modi government. Sent mistakenly on an internal TOI journalist group by Asthana, the message detailed how he, along with former Economic Times and OPEN magazine editor P.R. Ramesh, lobbied on behalf of an unnamed income tax official with finance minister Arun Jaitley.

https://thewire.in/181157/times-of-india-vasundhara-raje-bjp-narendra-modi-press-censorship/