ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Jaitley recommends lifting of PTV ban

Special Correspondent in New Delhi

Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Arun Jaitley has recommended to the Union Cabinet that the ban on PTV be lifted.

The ban came into effect during the Kargil conflict. Even then the decision had invited a lot of ire from the elite and from sections of the political establishment.

It was hinted that censoring foreign networks -- even those beamed from a country that was carrying out an act of aggression -- could become a habit fraught with dangerous implications for the domestic media.

But the government's arguments were equally sound: Pakistani propaganda, it contended, were liable to influence not the relatively sophisticated urban populace or even those in the hinterlands; it was the denizens inhabiting the borderlands who were susceptible to enemy misinformation.

With peace now reigning on the borders it is of course anachronistic to continue with the ban.

Tell us what you think of this report