Journalists in Kerala held a protest march on Tuesday against Governor Arif Mohammad Khan, a day after he asked reporters from two Malayalam channels to leave a press briefing.
The kilometre-long protest march, organised by the Kerala Union of Working Journalists, ended at the Governor’s House.
On Monday, Khan had asked the reporters from Kairali News and MediaOne channels to leave his press briefing in Kochi.
“Get out. I won’t talk to you,” Khan had told a journalist from MediaOne. “And I won’t talk to Kairali. Please go away. I will not talk to MediaOne...If you want me to go away, I will go away. I don’t want to argue on this.”
Khan had accused MediaOne of targetting him for his stand on the Shah Bano case. He also alleged that Kairali was airing “wrong news against him”, which the channel did not rectify even after the Raj Bhawan sent many requests for corrections.
Reporters present at the briefing had told Khan that the list of names of news channels had been approved by the Raj Bhavan. He, however, dismissed it as an oversight.
Khan is currently locked in a tussle with the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Kerala government over the appointment of vice-chancellors in state-run universities. Vijayan had alleged that Khan’s interference in the appointments indicate that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh wanted to saffronise the state’s universities.
On Monday, the Kerala Union of Working Journalists had termed the governor’s stand as “wrong” and had asked him to withdraw the ban on the two news channels, according to The New Indian Express.
“This is not good for a democratic setup like ours,” said the organisation. “There may be a difference of opinion between the state government and the governor, but the media should not be dragged into the tussle.”
Kairali News is said to be backed by the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Meanwhile, MediaOne TV had gone off air on January 31 after the Centre suspended its telecast citing security reasons when the news channel approached the government for renewing its licence. The ban was suspended on March 15 by the Supreme Court.
The channel is reportedly backed by the Kerala unit of Jamaat-e-Islami, a socio-religious political organisation that was declared unlawful by the Centre for five years in 2019.
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