UP journalist booked for reporting on salt, roti being served as Mid-day meal

Lucknow: The journalist who reported that children studying at the government school in Uttar Pradesh’s Mirzapur district were served only chappatis with salt as their Mid-day meal — a flagship scheme of the central government — a case has been filed by the state government against the scribe who shot the video.

Pawan Jaiswal, who works with Jansandesh, a Hindi publication, has been booked for criminal conspiracy. Two more people who alerted Jaiswal of the act, including the representative of the concerned village, have been booked for “cooking up” the story and for “putting forth wrong facts”.

Around 100 students of a government primary school in Mirzapur district’s Siyur village were only served a paltry meal of salt and roti.

The move comes despite an assurance by the district magistrate that the matter would be looked into and “those responsible for serving such low standard mid-day meal will be dealt with strictly”.

“The issue has come to our notice and an inquiry was ordered in the issue. After the allegations of serving roti and salt were found true, two people Murari and Arvind Tripathi have been suspended and strict action will be taken further,” Anurag Patel, district magistrate of Mirzapur, had said.

The case is a grim reminder of the increasing trend of journalists being targeted in the Yogi Adityanath-ruled state.

First, it was Noida where a few journalists working with a news portal were arrested and booked under the Gangster act after a very flimsy FIR claimed that their articles were trying to defame the Noida police and blackmail certain officers.

Then it was Varanasi where a photo journalist was booked for catching on camera VNS police using children to clean the ghats. The charge slapped against the journalist is that he paid children to work.

Journalists in Varanasi have been protesting against the action.

In Shamli district of west UP, too, journalists have been targeted by administration lately and have been on dharna for the past few days.