By Arfat Khan
JAMMU: Perturbed over deep rot prevailing in the fourth pillar of democracy, renowned social and RTI activist has urged government for probe into advertisement scandal worth crores prevailing in the Department of Information and Public Relation (DIPR) on the name of ghost circulation of “Newspapers”.
In a tweet to LG Manoj Sinha, RTI activist Rajeshwar Singh Jamwal alleged that most of the newspapers despite claiming to be leading surprisingly invisible in the market.
Branding it as an act of organised loot of state exchequer Jamwal urged the LG for CID/ ACB probe to end this murky affair existing since long in DIPR and booked the offenders under relevant sections of law for intentionally furnishing wrong information.
Questioning authenticity of Chartered Accountant certification on the basis of which newspapers every year filed return with Registrar News Paper of India (RNI), Jamwal said that CID probe into this fake declarations on staff, number of copies printed, office, infrastructure, reporters and editor will itself bring the skeletons out of the cupboard.
Elaborating detail, Jamwal said that there are nearly 950 newspapers with periodicity as daily, fortnightly, monthly and weekly existed in the J&K and out of which 395 are empanelled with DIPR and qualifies for advertisements with annual budget of whooping more than 35 crores.
“Except a handful of leading newspapers, most of these empanelled newspapers are getting advertisements by furnishing misleading information about number of copies printed, staff, infrastructure and PF”
To my surprise even there are some newspapers which only published on the day when they get advertisement” quipped Jamwal. Whereas, there are several who claimed to be leading with 50 printed copies, he added.
“Declaration furnished to DIPR on staff, infrastructure and number of copies printed is entirely a hall of shame standing on lies” avers Jamwal.
Government distribute advertisement to newspapers for wider publication and reach to public but this practice has become a breeding ground for corruption where tenders and important information in the shape of advertisements failed to see the light of the day when it got allocated to such shaddy newspapers, complained Jamwal.
Ironically, neither the city renowned news agency nor the people in surrounding aware of such newspapers which claimed to be leading and brags of circulation in thousands, asserted a news agency owner located in Residency Road.
It’s surprising to see that a matric failed computer operator these days prepared 15 newspapers in just 4 hours, he added.
If Director DIPR Dr Sehrish Asgar care to look at the content of such dirty sheets, she would regret existence of these black sheets as empanelled newspapers” Jamwal asserted.
More shocking, a printing press which have capacity to print only 40 k copies if continuously run for 8 hours owned work for printing of nearly 20 newspapers in a day whose aggregate printing as per DIPR records goes beyond 5 lakhs copies.
He also alleged the involvement of some DIPR officials in this organised loot by black mailing sheets and urged the government for devising a fool proof mechanism to check open loot of government funds in DIPR besides handing over the matter to CID for verification of authencity of printing of copies from the printing press.