Top Cops’ meet
SHILLONG: Chief Minister Mukul Sangma is upset over the ‘ban’ on media enforced jointly by Intelligence Bureau and state police during the recent two-day conference of the DGPs and IGPs along with security heads of the Central police forces posted in the North-East held in the state capital.
Sources on Saturday said that what irked the Chief Minister was that his inaugural address was not allowed to be covered by the media including the DIPR even as the police personnel had given him some ‘lame excuses” as the reason.
The two-day conference concluded on Friday.
An official source said that the main reason the police cited was that the Intelligence Bureau did not want media to cover such an event.
However, critics said that the Chief Minister should have pulled up those responsible for not allowing the media to cover such an important event instead of keeping quiet.
This is for the first time that the media was not allowed to cover both the inaugural as well as valedictory functions addressed by the Chief Minister and the State Governor V. Shanmuganathan respectively.
Interestingly, a news channel from Guwahati and Doordarshan were allowed to cover the valedictory function held at Raj Bhavan here.
In fact, Shillong has hosted similar meet of the DGPs from the Northeast for eighth time.
A former Meghalaya DGP said that the media was always allowed at least to cover the inaugural and valedictory functions of such meetings in the past.
When other states had hosted similar meetings in the past, no bar was clamped on media, he said.
