The opposition had just staged the biggest rally in Delhi’s history. Everyone of us, including me, sitting with Charan Singh, was on tenterhooks. How would Mrs. Gandhi respond to this challenge from the combined opposition? It was then that Charan Singh, in his typical rustic style, uttered the prophetic words: “Jab billi charon taraf se ghir jaati hai to voh vaar karti hai aur voh vaar bada khatarnak hota hai. (When a cat is cornered from all sides, she strikes. That attack is very dangerous).”

The next morning I realised the correctness of Charan Singh’s feline premonition. My Editor-in-Chief, C Raghavan, called me to say that senior opposition leaders had been arrested. Mrs. Gandhi had declared Emergency. He asked me to check on whereabouts of opposition. When I reached UP Niwas to check on Charan Singh, a burly Jat bodyguard told me, “Chaudhary Sahib ko subah police le gayi (the cops took away Chaudhary Sahib this morning)”. From there I proceeded to the South Avenue residence of the then Congress young “Turk” Chandra Shekhar; he too had been picked up.

The stories went out over the PTI ticker about Emergency arrests and they were headlines in afternoon newspaper supplements brought out by almost all newspapers. Then the censors arrived, all information officers of the Press Information Bureau, who till the day before used to give out stories, began killing stories that they thought were anti-government. The censorship period was a miserable time for journalists; there was nothing much to report.

News of the end of Emergency also arrived through an unconventional route: not via premonition but a lowly leak. “I was in Parliament House when one of the security staff whispered to me: Emergency ko utha rahe hain aur election hone wala hai (Emergency is being lifted and elections will be held).” I asked him how he knew and he said that he had overheard ministers talking about it.

With censorship in force this type of speculative story could never be allowed. When I told my superiors, they too dismissed the idea as unbelievable. They said that there was no question of the Emergency being lifted. But what the security man in Parliament had heard was true. Shortly after, Emergency was eased and elections were announced.

Imposition of press censorship was followed by merger of four agency news agencies - PTI, UNI, Samachar Bharti and Hidustan Samachar - into an amorphous entity called Samachar. News stories considered sensitive were required to be cleared by the PMO. Once an overzealous officer even objected to Samachar running the speech of Mrs. Gandhi at the Gauhati session of the AICC. “How was the copy (on Mrs. Gandhi’s speech) be allowed to go on wires without being cleared?”, he growled. When told he should check with the Prime Minister, he backed off.

Samachar staff was under constant pressure. One day a government officer marched into the office and imperiously demanded that a district correspondent in Haryana be sacked for what he termed as “incorrect” reporting of a speech by defence minister Bansi Lal. The speech had created controversy and caused some embarrassment to the defence minister who wanted to make scapegoat of the correspondent. The management, however, did not oblige as the stringer had merely reported what the minister had said.

Not only were the four agencies forced into a shotgun merger, which was portrayed as voluntary, but even the general manager was appointed by the government. Mohammad Yunus, who was close to Mrs Gandhi, drew up a plan for a world network of Samachar with 40 correspondents selected by him to be posted at world capitals. The antecedents of thousands of Samachar employees were ordered to be checked by the police with the intention of weeding out communal elements. Samachar was viewed by government as virtually a public sector undertaking and an official of the Bureau of Public Enterprises was appointed the Executive Director.

Fortunately emergency was short-lived, as was the creation of Samachar. The merger of agencies was undone in 1978 and PTI was back as an independent entity. The Shah Commission which probed the excesses of the Emergency summoned Wilfred Lazarus, who had become acting General Manager of Samachar. The Commission asked Lazarus why Samachar had given minimal coverage to the political rallies of Jayaprakash Narayan? Lazarus retorted: “We don’t weigh news by kilo”, signaling that journalists had once again found their voice and their spunk. (IPA Service)