Freedom Forum's attention has been drawn towards an incident of press freedom violation occurred in Mahottari, a district in the eastern Terai region of the country on April 11, 2011.
Local Development Officer of Mahottari, Rajendra Dev Pande barred the journalists from collecting news from the District Development Committee Office following the publication of the news regarding the absence of chief officers in a dozen of district offices.
The news reported by a local reporter of the Rajdhani national daily, Kamalesh Mandal was published in the local newspapers and in the Rajdhani daily published from the Capital as well.
According to journalist Kamalesh Mandal Local Development Officer Pande also directed his employees not to give news/information to the journalists.
Freedom Forum concludes that it is the sheer violation of people's right to information (RTI). The act of hiding information by the public bodies is against the RTI Act. So, the Freedom Forum urges responsible government body and the LDO Pande to provide the news of public importance to the people through the journalists so as to maintain transparency and respect RTI.
For more information,
Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np
01-4102030/ 4102022