It looks as if the Narendra Modi government is running on silence. Important secretaries are tight-lipped. There’s no media advisor to the PM. The Press Information Bureau (PIB) has hardly any information.
The BJP has scrapped its daily briefing, which was the lifeline of the political beat for many years.
What has stumped hardcore political journalists in Delhi is that the numerous BJP blow horns like Ravi Shakar Prasad, now law minister, Prakash Javedkar, now I & B minister, and even Arun Jaitley, who sometimes spent the entire day in front of TV cameras uncomplainingly and patiently answering questions ranging from politics to social propriety and offering advice to the nation, at large, are nowhere to be seen. The byte has gone out of the BJP.
And what is even more uncomplimentary is that the daily briefing in the BJP headquarters at 11, Ashoka Road, which converted the drab morning hours to prime time TV, has been stopped.
OB vans no longer line this beautiful avenue. The once-accessible friendly BJP office-bearers have “gone underground”.
As said by a BJP worker that newspapers are scanned every morning to keep tabs on who in the party and government was talking to the media and on what.
The M J Akbar, newly appointed spokesperson is nowhere to be seen and has not briefed the press even once. Subramaniam Swamy, who tweeted endlessly with often strange allegations, looks to have developed arthritis in his thumb.
There is no media adviser to the PM, even after 21 days of Narendra Modi being sworn in, is glaring. Jagdish Thakkar, a Gujarat officer has been appointed as the PRO to the PMO, but as per a Gujarat daily he will be no Sanjay Baru or Pankaj Pachauri and will not be briefing the press.
The 70-year-old official will most likely be pointing out negative reports or bringing some such vital information to the attention of the PM.
Ministers of the Modi government have been instructed not to speak to the media. That’s the job of the government spokesman or of a ministry spokesman, if a particular ministry does not have a dedicated spokesman.
BJP MPs have been warned of the possibility of a Bangaru Laxman-type sting!
Ever since May 26, very few Union ministers have addressed a press conference. In next to no time, after he was sworn in as prime minister, Narendra Modi called a meeting of the BJP parliamentary party in the Central Hall of Parliament, where he gave them what the Congress has dubbed “10 commandments”.
One of them was: “Avoid speaking to the media. There is no need to speak on national issues unnecessarily.”
Government briefings have stopped. In the UPA tenure, there was a Group of Ministers (GoM) on Media that used to meet everyday at a fixed hour to analyze the events of the day GoM has been scrapped, along with the others.
The media who have been covering BJP for years and were on wonderful terms with party leaders are all of a sudden finding it hard to get through to them. Even when they do breach the wall, wanting to speak on a certain issue, all they get is a “cannot say anything” comment.
It seems that the government has no media policy. Scanning government websites is a waste of time. Even the PMO website is more or less on the way out. It’s not yet updated.
There is cite of ‘Quest for Transparency’ but RTI on officials in the PMO and their service details are not fully transparent.
According to PIB officials they rely on Twitter to get to know what the government is up to and what and how much of the information should be told to the media. Press statements are drafted based on tweets posted by the PMO. Narendra Modi has already emphasized the importance of social media to interact with the people.
Delhi, where hot news or a spicy gossip gust in with every gust of wind from the Yamuna, is looking like a parched state, looking for abet. The byte has gone out of the BJP.