A case in point is their negligible or nil presence in the press galleries of Houses of Parliament. They are mostly seen during the Zero Hour and partly in the Question Hour mostly to watch excitements and thrills of the proceedings. Thereafter, the press galleries are virtually empty with only presence of agencies like UNI, PTI, VARTA and BHASHA in addition to the official media AIR and Doordarshan. In addition, the electronic news media (TVs) are their in full strength looking for news and sound bites from the concerned VIPs/VVIPs to suit their requirements of news and views. Added to this, even journalists since long retired for more than a decade, say 15 to 20 years before, mostly from agencies are being maintained on the role of accredited journalists on their earlier addresses even though they hardly represent any media organisation! This is happening with the connivance of public relations wings of Parliament Secretariats.

There are 600 media persons accredited to the Parliament, majority of whom are lobbyists. Their names are approved by Accreditation Committee comprising media persons, mostly innocuous ones. Added to this, Public Relations Wings of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariat have no mechanism or wherewithal to judge the genuineness of the press persons. They accept covertly sumptuous gifts and palliatives in various forms for favour of accreditation to the Houses of Parliament, a very subtle device with attendant cautious approach with almost near impossible to detect such misdemeanor. This is happening because there is no built-in system of filtering the professional credibility and bonafides of genuine journalists as well as their security and antecedents clearances.

Whereas press accreditation to the Government of India in the Press Information Bureau (PIB) is almost fool proof and rigorous. The system so built-in over the years is above board as can be seen from several examples of the so called powerful media men and women with doubtful credentials having been denied accreditation on the solid and absolute grounds that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs would not clear such cases and even Ministerial recommendations won't work on the touch stone of national security considerations. Some similar device and mechanism needs to be introduced in the system of granting accreditation to media persons in Parliament in order to weed out the innocuous journalists and agents of extraneous interests, mascarading as press persons. For such purposes, PIB, Ministry of Home Affairs and Delhi Police should be associated in the process of accreditation to the Parliament in order to secure Parliament fully!