KARACHI: Sindh Assembly (SA) Speaker Siraj Khan Durrani on Monday imposed a ban on live coverage of house session. In addition to this, all the passes issued to the journalists and private televisions’ employees have also been revoked.
On the imposition of the ban, Durrani was of the opinion that since the country’s intelligence agencies had informed him about a possible attack on SA, he decided to impose ban on live coverage. However, the ban is only for live coverage and the journalists from newspapers would be allowed to continue their job of reporting but their entry passes have been revoked.
The private televisions have been asked to collect the video footages of the session of the SA from a media box that has been installed outside the assembly.
It has been learned that the ban is imposed on recommendation of Sindh Senior Finance Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah for the post-budget sessions as the leader of opposition few days ago on behalf of the entire opposition benches had announced for exposing Sindh government in speeches.
It has also been learned that the decision for imposing ban on live coverage of the post-budget sessions of the SA was taken in a meeting of the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentary Committee and the majority of the participants had agreed with the finance minister.
It is pertinent to mention here that since PPP has always been quite vocal for the freedom of expression and had in recent past adopted a Bill on the very same subject, the ban would put the party under severe criticism and other provincial assemblies might follow the footsteps of the SA. In any situation, the PPP would have to bear the burden for imposing the ban on media.
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