On 13th November 2017, PGurus, an online portal had reported how the Editor-in-Chief of PTI news agency may have lied about his experience to acquire a permanent press pass to Lok Sabha.
According to Parliament rules a journalist is eligible to get a permanent media pass with RF Tag only if he/she has covered either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha with temporary Session Pass for at least 10 sessions continuously. PGurus claimed that while Vijay Joshi acquired a permanent pass, this criterion wasn’t met.
PGurus reported :
The “claim” of having covered Parliament is a total lie by Vijay Joshi and it can be easily established by perusing his resume and his career record. Joshi had joined PTI earlier in 1986 as a trainee journalist and worked on the Desk. During that period, Joshi not only did not cover Parliament but did not even enter the Parliament complex. He might have seen the Parliament building from his PTI Desk’s office windows, say veteran PTI staffers. In 1989, Joshi quit PTI and joined the Associated Press. Soon after he was posted by the Associated Press to East Asian countries and was based in Singapore. So there was no chance of him covering the Indian parliament. He was back to PTI only in February 2017 as it’s Editor in Chief with the blessings of the outgoing Chief MK Razdan
The report also claimed that at the time, the then Executive Editor VS Chandrashekhar was eligible to become to Editor-in-Chief of PTI, but outgoing chief MK Razdan airdropped Joshi as the chief even though he had been abroad for 28 years.
Today, news surfaced, against reported by PGurus that the Lok Sabha haven found the misrepresentations made by Editor-in-Chief Joshi has withheld his permanent press pass to the LS.
The report said :
Last week, the Press Advisory Committee withheld his permanent pass and directed him to undergo mandatory Parliament reporting experience for two consecutive sessions. So as per the decision, Vijay Joshi will get only temporary session pass and will have to cover two sessions with the temporary pass to get qualified for the permanent pass.
Reportedly, the Advisory Committee of Lok Sabha had urged Joshi to produce his passport and insisted on criminal proceedings. But the Chairman of the committee, DP Kamath decided against the criminal proceedings and directed Joshi to cover two proceedings with a temporary pass.
Allegedly, In his application to Lok Sabha, Vijay Joshi claimed that he covered Parliament during 1991 to 1994. This was a total lie as he was not in India during that period and came back to India only in February 2017.
