IN a direct attack on the freedom of the press, Daily Desher Katha , the popular mouthpiece of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Tripura, was closed down by Biplab Kumar Deb’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP)-Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) government in the State. In what appeared to be a premeditated move, the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI), apparently acting at the behest of the administration, cancelled the registration of the 40-year-old newspaper on October 1 on the grounds that it had violated the Press and Registration of Books (PRB) Act, 1867. This meant that the daily had to stop publication. The move is being perceived in political and social quarters as a veiled warning to those who dare to criticise the State government.
What appears to have been a simple lapse in updating certain information relating to the newspaper on the RNI website has resulted in this extreme step taken by the State administration. A complaint was filed by a local person in the court of the District Magistrate of West Tripura that there was a discrepancy in the information that Daily Desher Katha presented about itself in the newspaper and what was put up on the RNI website. The printline of the paper states that Samir Paul is the editor, printer and publisher and that the Daily Desher Katha Trust is the owner. But according to the RNI website, Gautam Das is the editor, printer and publisher, and the CPI(M) Tripura State Committee the owner.
The CPI(M) says this was not the paper’s fault, as all necessary documents had been provided for every change in the management and editorship of Daily Desher Katha . When the paper came into existence on August 15, 1979, a year after the CPI(M) came to power in the State, it was owned by the Tripura State Committee of the CPI(M), and Gautam Das was its founder-editor and publisher and printer. In 2012, the party decided that the management of the newspaper should be handled by a “society”, and accordingly the Daily Desher Katha Society was formed. In 2015, with Gautam Das getting more preoccupied with party work, the Society decided to appoint Samir Paul as the new editor, publisher and printer.
In September this year, the Daily Desher Katha Society decided to convert the ownership into a “trust”, and the Daily Desher Katha Trust came into being with Gautam Das as its chairman. “Whether it was the change of proprietorship from the party to the society to the trust, or the change of editorship from Gautam Das to Samir Paul, all the relevant documents as per procedure were submitted to the District Magistrate [DM], and all the necessary formalities were followed so that the matter could be updated by the RNI,” Rahul Sinha, party leader and senior journalist of Daily Desher Katha , told Frontline .
It was around June this year that the management of the daily came to know that the change of proprietorship and editorship made in 2012 and 2015 respectively had not been updated by the RNI. The DM, who is in charge of newspapers of the district, was apprised of the situation, and on July 4 he gave a written reply that he had enquired into all the aspects of the problem and, after verification, had sent all the documents to the RNI. “After submission of the proposal, it is a responsibility of RNI to issue Certificate of Registration of said Newspaper U/S 6 of the Press & Registration of Books Act, 1867,” wrote Mahatme Sandeep Namdeo, District Magistrate, West Tripura, to Samir Paul, editor and publisher of Daily Desher Katha .
On September 1, this year a trust was formed to take over the management of the daily. The documentation for this was authenticated by a first class magistrate before it was submitted to the RNI by the proprietors. On October 1, the RNI issued a Revised Registration Certificate, which clearly stated that the proprietor of the newspaper was the Daily Desher Katha Trust and the editor was Samir Paul. This was also updated in their web portal.
However, the matter did not end there. According to Rahul Sinha, when the revised certificate was submitted in the court of the DM the same day, the DM apparently summoned the Sub-Divisional Magistrate who had authenticated the documents of Daily Desher Katha and ordered him to cancel the authentication. He then communicated to the RNI that the authentication was cancelled, and the RNI, at around 9:45 the same night, emailed the publisher the information that the Certificate of Registration issued by it had been withdrawn. “The Office of the Registrar of Newspapers for India is in receipt of an email from the office of the District Magistrate and Collector, West Tripura, Agartala, enclosing a communication from the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Sadar, West Tripura… cancelling the authentication as recorded by him over the declaration made in Form 1 by Shri Samir Paul… regarding the Bengali daily newspaper Daily Desher Katha ,” said the letter from the RNI.
BJP’s alleged involvement
The manner in which the newspaper was forced to close shop in spite of having all the necessary documents convinced observers that there was a deeper political motive behind this. According to the CPI(M), after the hearing in the DM’s court ended around 6:15 p.m., the DM said he would pass his order in the next 15 minutes. What is baffling is why it took the DM five hours instead.
According to Gautam Das, who is also a CPI(M) Central Committee member, the presence of the senior BJP leader Rajiv Bhattacharya in the room of the DM after the hearing was over was clear evidence of the BJP’s influence behind it all. “What the District Magistrate did was at the behest of the State government. It was not just a violation of the freedom of the press but also of all democratic principles and even the law,” Gautam Das told Frontline .
At around 11:35 that night the DM passed an order stating:
“I hereby pass the order to cancel the declaration submitted by Sri Samir Paul dated 30th March 2015 and under Section 8(B) of Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867, as it has been found that Daily Desher Katha is violating Section 5 (1), Section 5 (2E).
“I hereby request to Registrar of Newspapers of India to take cognisance of cancellation of declaration and to cancel the certificate of registration in favour of Daily Desher Katha .
“The respondent (OP) is advised to prefer an appeal to Hon’ble Press and Registration Appellate Board as per Section 8c of PRB Act, 1867. The publication of this newspaper may resume again if this order is set aside by the Hon’ble Press and Registration Appellate Board. Violation of this order shall be treated seriously and in case of violation, Sri Samir Paul shall be liable for legal action and also the publication premises and printing press shall be forcibly locked and sealed as to stop the publication in order to uphold the Rule of Law.”
“By closing down Daily Desher Katha , the BJP has once again proved that it does not tolerate any kind of dissent. Daily Desher Katha has been consistently exposing the ruling party’s misrule and that is the reason why such a step has been taken against it. If one protests against the intolerance of the BJP government, one will get murdered. M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh are burning examples of that,” said Gautam Das.
Even the CPI(M)’s old and bitter enemy, the Congress, came down heavily on the State government. “What the government did was a naked attack on the media. We condemn it. The government is trying to send a message that those who are critical of it will suffer the same fate. Immediately after coming to power, they first started attacking members of their rival political parties, and now they have trained their guns on the media,” Tapas Dey, vice president and spokesperson of the Tripura Pradesh Congress, told Frontline .
According to the CPI(M), the BJP government of Tripura has targeted its mouthpiece right from the time the BJP came to power in March this year. “After coming to power, the BJP-IPFT combine has been trying to destroy Daily Desher Katha . They seized control of the transport depots and prevented copies of the paper from reaching different parts of the State,” said Gautam Das. In fact, in the last seven months the circulation of the paper dropped from 53,000 to just 8,000. “Agents and hawkers of the paper were being threatened, copies of the newspaper were burnt and our reporters were attacked. In April, the department of ICA [Information and Cultural Affairs] abruptly stopped giving advertisements to us. After we approached the department, they resumed giving ads but the volume fell drastically,” said Rahul Sinha.
There have also been innumerable instances of attacks on party members and on party property. The Congress, too, has been suffering for the past few months. “They have bulldozed around 45 Congress party offices all over the State that have stood on government land for the last 40 years. Under the Tripura Land Reforms Act, if anybody occupies government land for 30 years or more they have a claim on that land. The government has to first serve an eviction notice and then proceed to the court, but they just bulldozed our offices to the ground,” said Tapas Dey. The BJP is accused of using force even on non-political issues. The CPI(M) claimed that BJP goons attacked its workers who were collecting funds for the flood victims of Kerala.
The closing down of Daily Desher Katha is seen as the culmination of the growing intolerance of the BJP in Tripura, and its condemnation has been unequivocal and widespread. The Editors Guild of India said in a statement: “The Guild is of the view that cancellation of the registration of a publication on the mere finding that there was mismatch between the information of the editor, printer and publisher is not only a gross overreaction but also a draconian step that throttles the freedom of the media.”
As of October 4, the management of the paper was exploring various alternatives, including taking recourse to legal action. Gautam Das told Frontline : “Our immediate concern is to protect the interest of the 200-odd employees of Daily Desher Katha .”
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