Guwahati: As India continues to lose journalists to Covid-19 complications, a national union of scribes has appealed to the Union government in New Delhi to declare working journalists as frontline warriors. Indian Journalists Union (IJU) also urges all States and Union territories to separately announce compensations to the families of corona-media victims excluding the Centre’s sanction of rupees five lakh to each beneficiary.
Some State governments have already offered compensation to the victim families, where Odisha tops the list with ₹ 15 lakh aid to each affected journo-family die to corona-complications. Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Punjab governments have announced ₹ 10 lakh each to such victim families. Both Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh governments announced ₹ 5 lakh each, followed by Bihar government ₹ 4 lakh and Telangana government ₹ 2 lakh aid to kin of journalists who died of Covid-19 aggravated ailments.
Northeast India, comprising eight States with over 60 million population, has lost at least 20 scribes due to Covid-19 since the pandemic hit in March 2020. Besides three scribes, who died while working outside the region, all others succumbed to virus infection aggravated ailments, while performing their duty as covid warriors.
Though Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim have not reported any journo-death because of the heath disaster till date, Assam witnessed the highest number of corona-casualties among media persons (thirteen editor-journalists). Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya also lost their journalists to the corona-crisis. But no State government in the region has sanctioned a single rupee to the victim-families.
“Assam government initially announced that it would include the corona-media victims in the list of rupees 50 lakh life insurance scheme beneficiaries along with the other front-line warriors, but lately it remains unusual silent over the commitment,” said a statement issued by IJU president K. Sreenivas Reddy and secretary-general Balwinder Singh Jammu.
However, in reference to journo-murder index, the region sets to complete another year with no incident of casualties as 2021 is approaching the end. It witnessed two major casualties of journalists (Shantanu Bhowmik and Sudip Datta Bhaumik) during 2017 in Tripura. Even in 2013, the same State reported the assassination of three media persons namely Sujit Bhattacharya, Ranjit Chowdhury and Balaram Ghosh.
Assam and Manipur witnessed the murder of journalists last time (till now) when Raihanul Nayum and Dwijamani Nanao Singh fell prey to perpetrators in 2012. Once a troubled region lost more than 30 editors/reporters/correspondents to assailants since 1991, where the saga of sensational journo-murder started with the assassination of veteran Assamese freedom fighter, teacher and journalist Kamala Saikia by the armed separatist militants.
IJU bats for compensation to media corona-victims
