The 5th Zilla Parishad meeting on Wednesday experienced an unpleasant situation. The attending mediapersons were instructed to leave the meeting venue.
The district Collector said several loopholes and faults will be discussed among different stakeholders as Government officials, ZP members and peoples representatives, Minister, MP and MLAs will remain present.
When the mediapersons protested the decision, State Water Resources and Public Relations Minister Raghunandan Das along with the district Collector and ZP president tried to persuade them to attend the meeting.
However, many of them left the place.
As the Odisha Government ’s 5Ts principle aim at achieving progress through transparency, team work, technology, time and transformation, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has asked officials to work in cohesion for improving efficiency and accountability in governance. So media role is to act as an overseer for successful implementation of Government schemes and to generate public opinions through reporting, claimed many scribes.
As media performs as watchdog of society, it should have access in every field of governance, they added.
Reports said that earlier media people had been restricted from attending ZP meeting in Jagatsinghpur, but for maintaining better transparency in administration and governance, former Collector Yamini Sarangi had instructed to invite media people in each ZP and DRDA meeting.
