ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting clearly misled the Supreme Court by providing a tampered list of the Special Publicity Fund, instead of the list of people funded secretly.
Although, it is now a general perception that the Supreme Court exposed a secret list of journalists on April 22, the impression is not correct. In fact, the Supreme Court exposed the names on the list of what is known as the Special Publicity Fund (SPF). The real Secret Funds list is still a secret.
According to the Supreme Court order of April 11 in the Media Commission case, the information ministry provided four files to the apex court; the first was about the SPF, the second about secret service expenditure, the third related to the Institute of Regional Studies and the fourth was again about the SPF.
The counsel for information ministry, Raja Amir Abbas, said that the court could make public the Special Publicity Funds file but Secret Funds file must not be made public. At that stage, the petitioners informed the court that they had demanded to expose the Secret Funds list, not any other list.
The petitioners also apprehended that the information ministry was capable of tampering the lists by deleting the real names and inserting fake names. The court ordered the information ministry officials to come up with the attested lists.
The information ministry officials came up on April 22 with two attested lists. The List A was about the Special Publicity Fund and the list B was about the Secret Funds. The List A contained 282 items with an amount of Rs177,988,450. The List B contained 174 items with an amount of Rs86,813,633. The court ordered that List A be made public and it was loaded on its website. The List B of Secret Funds was not made public because the information ministry claimed that it contained some national secrets.
It is clearly written on the List A that it is the SPF and not the Secret Fund. It is interesting to note that previous lawyers of the information ministry always claimed that the ministry was only using the Secret Fund for the welfare of some widows. The new counsel of information ministry, Raja Amir Abbas, changed the stance and claimed that the Secret Fund was being used in the war against terror.
He also admitted that the information ministry hires the services of some ghost writers who write articles against Taliban and they are very expensive. The petitioners disagreed with the ministry and said that many brave journalists were writing against the Taliban under their real names and they are better patriots than the ghost writers.
The names of these ghost writers were not made public. The names of all the widows were included in the Special Publicity Fund list. Justice Khilji Arif clearly said on Thursday that there were no names in the List B, which is the real Secret Fund list. It was proved that the information ministry had been misguiding the court in the past by claiming that Secret Fund was for the welfare of some widows.
Many journalists and TV anchors appeared in the Supreme Court on Thursday and complained that their names were wrongly included in the SPF list. Advocate Asma Jahangir appeared on behalf of Rameeza Nizami and Fariha Idrees. These two ladies never visited the UK with former PM Yusuf Raza Gilani but the information ministry included their names in the list and showed that it spent money on their travel.
Advocate Tariq Mahmood appeared on behalf of Muneezey Jahangir who never visited Korea but her name was also included in the list. Advocate Salman Akram Raja appeared on behalf of Rauf Klasra. The name of another senior journalist Nusrat Javeed was also wrongly included in the list and Justice Khilji Arif said that he heard Nusrat Javeed saying on his TV show that he never visited the UK with former PM.
Justice Khilji Arif also said that if anyone went to the UK or Korea to cover the visit of PM, there was nothing wrong because they were nominated by their organisations. Another journalist Intikhab Hanif said that he never received Rs100,000 from the information ministry but his name was also included in the SPF list to malign his reputation.
Journalist Shakil Turabi said that the information ministry gave a regular grant of Rs600,000 in the name of his news agency but they showed this grant in his name, which was a clear tampering of facts.
Turabi provided documentary evidence to the court and claimed that the information ministry intentionally tried to malign the names of some journalists who supported the demand to expose the Secret Fund.
It was not clear why the information ministry included the name of PFUJ President Pervez Shaukat in the list who visited Lahore as a member of the Salim Shehzad Inquiry Commission and spent one night in a hotel.
He was not aware that his boarding-lodging expenses were paid by the information ministry. Same was the case of Iftikhar Ahmad, Sohail Warraich, Amir Mir, Abbas Ather, Raza Rumi, Ali Ahmad Dhilon and many other journalists who were invited by the ministry for some media workshops and briefings and they were given a one-day stay in Islamabad Hotel for less than Rs60,000.
The ministry included the charges of their hotel stay in the SPF list. It never disclosed the full name of a mysterious character M. Ashraf who stayed in PC Bhurban for on 6-8-2011, spending Rs146,603 and then he was paid Rs400,000 from the SPF on 26-8-2011.
It was obvious that the ministry tried its best to hide the names of many favourites and maligned many respectable journalists to create confusion and divide the media community.Now the Supreme Court has issued notices to the information ministry officials to explain why they included some wrong names in the attested list of the SPF.
The ministry claimed privilege on the List B and said that this list of Secret Fund should not be disclosed because ISI and ISPR were also on board to use the fund.Two journalists, Hamid Mir and Absar Alam, filed a constitutional petition against corruption in the media in July last year and demanded to expose and abolish the Secret Fund. Nine months have passed. The media commission has been formed which declared that use of Secret Fund was according to the law.
The working of this commission was also funded by the Special Publicity Fund of the information ministry. The names of some expensive patriotic ghost writers are still a secret but the information ministry successfully maligned the names of many journalists who never received a single penny in their whole life from any Secret Fund.



http://images.thenews.com.pk/27-04-2...ws/t-22506.htm