Newspapers publish blank front page in Kashmir

SRINAGAR — Newspapers in Kashmir valley today published a blank front page in protest against the ‘government’s unofficial ban’ on advertisements to two of the prominent dailies.

The dailies including “Greater Kashmir” and “Kashmir Reader” have been ‘blacklisted’ as far as government advertisements are concerned, says a journalist based in Srinagar.

The first pages of the newspapers which are part of the Kashmir Editors Guild read: “In protest against unexplained denial of government advertisements to Greater Kashmir and Kashmir Reader.”

In February, the Jammu and Kashmir administration, under Governor Satya Pal Malik, had suspended advertising to the two newspapers without specifying a reason.

The Kashmir Editors Guild had, in an earlier statement, said the state administration is trying “deliberate strangulation and subversion of the institution of media in the state”.

Greater Kashmir was already blacklisted from getting ads from the Central government’s Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity in 2008.

In 2016, Kashmir Reader was banned for three months during mass protests by the coalition government of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Peoples Democratic Party.

The state has been under President’s rule since December 2018. Governor’s rule was imposed in June 2018 when the coalition state government fell apart after the Bharatiya Janata Party pulled out of an alliance with the Peoples Democratic Party.