New Delhi: Congress party veterans hit out at Prasar Bharati on Sunday after the country's public broadcaster issued a letter to news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) threatening to review their "relationship" over its alleged "anti-national" reportage on Indo-China standoff at Ladakh's Galwan Valley.
In a tweet, former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram asked Prasar Bharati to "immediately withdraw the letter to PTI" while stating that the official media organs of the government Doordarshan and All India Radio which fall under the ambit of Prasar Bharati "have little independence and less credibility".
Similarly, accusing Prasar Bharati of "denying Indians the chance to hear what the other side is saying", Congress leader and Kerala MP Shashi Tharoor hit out at the broadcaster in a tweet.
The letter in question was issued by the "autonomous" public broadcaster on Saturday after PTI ran an interview of Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Weidong on June 25 where he blamed India for the India-China violent standoff that saw the death of 20 Indian soldiers.
Titled “news reporting by PTI not in national interest,” the letter, written by Samir Kumar - head of Prasar Bharati News Service - and addressed to PTI’s Chief Marketing Officer, called the wire service's “recent news coverage” detrimental to “national interest and undermining India’s territorial integrity.”
Prasar Bharati communicated further in the letter that PTI's editorial stance makes it untenable to "continue relationship".
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While Sun blamed India for the LAC stand-off during the controversial interview and said that the “onus is not on China" when asked about the resolution of the dispute, incidentally, the very interview is also the instance wherein a Chinese government representative had gone on record to accept that Beijing too suffered "casualties" during the violent standoff between the troops of both the countries on June 15.
Prasar Bharati has paid Rs 9.15 crore annually to PTI for its services since 2013. However, since 2017, the public broadcaster has been holding back about 25 per cent as it wants to review the costs.
