New Delhi: The government on Wednesday reconstituted the Press Council of India (PCI) with the addition of 13 members, mostly editors and working journalists.
The PCI is headed by Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai (retd) and currently has 14 members, including five MPs, six representatives from newspaper owners and three experts from the Bar Council of India (BCI), University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Sahitya Akademi.
Now, the government has nominated six editors and seven working journalists, other than editors, as members of the PCI.
"In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (a) of sub-section (3) and sub-section (5) of section 5 read with sub-section (1) of section 6 of the Press Council Act, 1978 (37 of 1978), the Central Government hereby nominates the following members to the Press Council of India," a notification issued by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry said.
Those nominated in the Working Journalists (Editors Category) are Pradeep Kumar Jain, Sayed Raza Husain Rizvi, Ankur Dua, Aparna Shukla, Raj Parwana/Narender Singh and Vinod Bajpai.
Those nominated in the Working Journalists (Other Than Editors) are Vinod Kohli, Geetartha Pathak, Prajnananda Chaudhuri, Kingshuk Pramanik, C K Nayak, Prasanna Kumar Mohanty and Bijoy Kakchingtabam.
The PCI, a statutory autonomous body, has been set up under the Press Council Act, 1978, mainly to preserve the freedom of the press and improve the standards of newspapers and news agencies in the country.