No withdrawal of GO on Sakshi: Minister

HYDERABAD: Minister for information and public relations DK Aruna held talks with journalist unions in her chambers at the Secretariat here on Friday in the wake of protests launched by them across the state over stoppage of government advertisements to Sakshi daily newspaper and TV.The minister invited representatives of APUWJ, JAAP, APWJ, AP Photographers Association and others to a meeting to know the problems being faced by the working journalists across the state.It is learnt that the government had been contemplating stopping advertisement to the Sakshi group for quite some time and it was a coincidence that the GO was issued when the CBI froze the media group’s bank accounts. Ruling out withdrawal of the GO now, the minister, however, claimed that the government was concerned about the future of working journalists. After receiving feedback from the journalist unions, she said, she would place it before chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy for taking necessary action.IJU secretary-general Devulapalli Amar, APUWJ general secretary Y Narender Reddy and others alleged that the government ‘s action reminded one of the Emergency period when the press was muzzled.Amar objected to the comments made by some political leaders that journalists were supporting YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and explained that journalists were agitated only about the livelihood of the employees of Sakshi and were not bothered about government’s action against Jaganmohan Reddy. At the same time, Amar alleged that the CBI was showing bias.