Most newspaper's hit stands after 7 days, news channels still off

Srinagar, Aug 31 (UNI) Local newspapers hit the stands again after seven days while all news channels remained off the air in the Kashmir valley.

Most newspapers--both in English and Urdu-- hit the stand again this morning after the authorities provided special coloured curfew passes to journalists and other newspaper employees in the valley.

The management of about 40 newspapers, publishing from Srinagar, suspended their publication from August 24 after authorities imposed indefinite curfew following a Lal Chowk Chalo call for August 25 given by the Coordination Committee (CC) spearheading the present agitation in the valley.

The management said since they have no means to distribute the newspapers in the valley, they have decided to suspend the publication.

The curfew passes issued by the District Magistrate, Srinagar, to mediapersons were not honoured by the CRPF and police who beat up more than a dozen journalists and photo journalists besides correspondent and videographers of national and local channels.

However, internet editionals of some of the newspapers were available to readers.

No Jammu, Chandigarh and Delhi newspaper was also available in the market because of curfew. But people were using internet to reach these, besides international media.

All the local channels stopped their normal transmission in protest against what they alleged authorities' direction not to telecast news and current affairs programmes.

These channels telecasted live the Muzaffarabad, Pampore, UN military observers office and Eidgah chalo marchs in which lakhs of people participated and raised pro freedom slogans.

However, in retaliation, the local cable operators stopped telecasting national and international news channels. However, Geo and PTV programmes were being telecasted for two days before they too went off the air.

E-tv was the only news channel, besides national channels telecasting the programmes here.

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