Editors Guild of India condemns ‘coup'

Restore Kashmir Press Club's registration, start process of poll of office-bearers: PCI

SRINAGAR: A day after it witnessed a virtual coup, the Kashmir Press Club was locked down on Sunday by its new management citing COVID19 infection of a member, even though the Editors Guild of India and other journalists’ organisations condemned the forceful takeover and said it was part of a continuing trend to smother press freedom in Jammu and Kashmir.

A notice put up at the club gate stated that it has been shut after the detection of a COVID19 positive case and an email was sent to its members asking them not to visit the club located near the posh Polo Ground area of the city for one week. “I was informed by the gatekeeper that two persons from the interim body told him to shut the gates of the club and not let anyone inside as a member had tested positive,” the manager of the club, Sajad Ahmad, said.

The email from the interim body, which has come under severe criticism, claimed that its email account was “hacked by miscreants” and that a formal complaint “was being filed against the incident of the account hacking and subsequent mischief”.

In New Delhi, the Editors Guild of India issued a strongly worded statement condemning the “coup” at KPC by the Jammu and Kashmir administration and termed it a continuing trend to smother press freedom in the union territory with the help of police who have been “brazenly complicit” in it.

The Guild said it was aghast at the manner in which the office and management of KPC, the largest journalists’ association in the valley, was forcibly taken over by a group of journalists with the help of armed policemen on Saturday.