The Moradabad district magistrate is said to have “locked up” journalists who had turned up to cover chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s surprise visit to inspect the Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay district hospital in Moradabad on June 30. “Journalists are being held captive, questions are being curtailed, problems are being ignored,” tweeted Uttar Pradesh East Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi. “The full majority BJP government in Uttar Pradesh is turning away from people’s questions. The public knows it all. It will ask questions and demand answers too.”

The allegations were flatly denied by the district magistrate, Rakesh Kumar Singh.

According to Sushil Singh, ETV Bharat correspondent in Moradabad, the reporters were locked in the hospital’s emergency ward by the district magistrate in a bid to prevent them from asking Yogi Adityanath any questions. “Fortunately, I was a few minutes late and did not get locked up,” says Singh. “When I reached there, I saw policemen pushing journalists and locking them inside the emergency ward. This was being done on the orders of the district magistrate Rakesh Kumar who was standing there.”

Singh says the reporters were released only after the chief minister completed his inspection and left the hospital. “Those who were not locked up protested against this but there was no one to listen to us. This is an effort to silence the media.”

RK Raju, a photojournalist working with a wire service, claims the district magistrate told the journalists that the chief minister would be visiting the emergency ward and would take questions there. “All the scribes on the spot then went inside the emergency ward and the gate was locked from outside. This was done to prevent the media from asking the CM any questions also to stop the media from appraising him of the real situation in the district.”

Suhel Khan, a senior photojournalist with the Dainik Jagran group, told Newslaundry they were locked up because the district magistrate said they were “causing disturbances” during the CM’s inspection. “We stayed locked there for about 15 minutes. We were freed after fellow journalists protested.”

According to journalist Virat Sharma: “Everyone was inside the emergency ward. Some were told the CM will visit this ward, so a large number of journalists and photographers came inside. But it was soon locked by the SSP and PRO. We tried our best to get the doors opened but no one listened to us.” He says the majority of the journalists locked in were photojournalists.

Journalists who were present at the hospital told Newslaundry the door was opened by the SHO of Civil Lines, Shakti Singh. The journalists then staged a protest but it garnered no attention. Ashu Khan, a journalist who was part of the group, says: “The intention of the district administration is not yet clear, but it was totally unjustified. No one is willing to tell us the reason why journalists were locked up. The district administration could have informed us that the chief minister will not take questions and we would not have gone there. The district administration needs to answer for this.”

Senior Lucknow-based reporter Rajendra Gautam agrees, saying the move raises questions over the intentions of the state government. “The government should take strict action against those who are responsible,” says Gautam. “Such actions against journalists by local administrative officials bring bad publicity for the state government. The Press Council of India should take suo moto cognizance of this matter and take up the issue.”

Neeraj Srivastava, president of the Uttar Pradesh State Accredited Correspondent Committee has demanded strict action against the district magistrate. “Neither the government nor its officers want to face questions from the media,” says Srivastava. “This is dictatorship. The job of the media is to question the government. But how can media work freely when such actions by the local administration become regular practice?”

However, Moradabad-based reporter Sagar Rastogi believes the administration did nothing wrong. “The fault lies on both sides,” he told Newslaundry. “The number of journalists in the city has grown and now, even people running social media pages call themselves journalists. A large number of journalists had gathered inside the hospital and were trying to get into the intensive care unit when the administration took this step. People are creating unnecessary hype out of it.”

The district magistrate Rakesh Kumar Singh flatly denied allegations that he had locked up journalists. “There is no truth in this allegation,” he told Newslaundry over the telephone. “The reporters were only stopped because a large number of mediapersons went inside the ward during the inspection of the chief minister. There are some hospital protocols which had to be followed. Also, the fact is that there were no reporters from regional or national channels. They were all from local portals and their large numbers was disturbing our work. I am repeating again: no journalist was locked up, they were only stopped. Kabhi kabhi khabar banane ke liye khabar kar di jaati hai.” 

He then hung up the phone.  

Singh also told News18 that he’d asked for the preparation of “an ‘accurate’ list of government accredited journalists to prevent problems of coverage during VVIP visits”.

With inputs from Sudhir Goyal in Moradabad.

(The author is a Lucknow-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.)