The question Akhilesh Yadav must answer
Akhilesh Yadav now speaks of protecting a journalist’s right to ask questions. If a reporter cannot put a question, he says, a press conference should not be called a press conference at all; it should be called a “press monologue.” The line is agreeable to the ear. The question it cannot evade is what the condition of journalists was when Akhilesh Yadav was Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.Did reporters then enjoy the full freedom to ask?
Were those who put the government to an uncomfortable question safe?
Did the conduct of the government and the party organisation towards the press, under the SP regime, resemble the speeches Akhilesh Yadav now delivers?One need not travel far back for an answer. Shahjahanpur in 2015, and the journalist Jagendra Singh, remain before Akhilesh Yadav a question that no oration on press freedom can discharge.
The Burning Alive of Jagendra Singh and the Defence of the Accused Minister
In June 2015, Jagendra Singh, a journalist from Shahjahanpur, was burned alive in his home. His offence was that he had written persistently about allegations of illegal mining, land seizure and corruption linked to Ram Murti Singh Verma, then a minister in the SP government. The minister did not take the reporting kindly.
The matter did not end there. While Jagendra Singh lay in hospital, fighting for his life, the minister’s influence was again used to have him attacked in the hospital itself. Jagendra Singh later died. Thereafter Ram Gopal Yadav, the Samajwadi Party’s national general secretary, went so far as to argue against the minister’s removal from the Cabinet. It was not, he said, a matter large enough to require that a minister be stripped of office.
Reporters Beaten at the Press Conference Called in Their Name
In Moradabad, Akhilesh Yadav held a press conference. Journalists attended. One of them put a question that was not to his liking. Akhilesh’s supporters then began beating the reporters. Several were seriously injured.Stories of his anger towards journalists are not one but many. At times he brands them agents of another party; at times he asks their caste in order to humiliate them. At times he says openly that he will have them thrown out; that he will administer another kind of treatment; that he will have a throat cut with a sword.
A Lecture on Liberty Must First Answer a Record of Intimidation
If Akhilesh Yadav wishes today to speak of journalism, he must also attend to his own bearing. He must recall how he issued direct threats to reporters and levelled direct charges against them. What followed, in his government, when a question was asked is a question that must now be put to him.Pointing a finger at others will not absolve him of his own acts. If the values of journalism are to be invoked, the further question will arise: what, in fact, did you do to defend them?
