Lucknow, July 1: Moradabad District Magistrate has dismissed reports of journalists being locked up in the city hospital emergency ward while Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had come for a visit there on Sunday, ANI reported. DM Rakesh Kumar Singh called the reports “baseless”.
“The allegation that media persons were locked up is baseless. They were just stopped by police near the door of emergency ward,” the news agency quoted District Magistrate Rakesh Kumar Singh as saying.
On Saturday, a controversy was triggered following Yogi Adityanath’s visit to the hospital in Moradabad, with media persons alleging that they were locked up in an emergency room for two hours, so they couldn’t ask questions to the CM.
DM Rakesh Kumar Singh posted guards outside the gate to ensure that the journalists did not come out during Adityanath’s visit, IANS reported on Saturday.
After half-an-hour when the Chief Minister left, Singh came and unlocked the gate, saying that the media persons were responsible for his actions. He asked the media persons not to visit the district hospital.
Following the incident, Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also slammed the UP government over the issue.
Priyanka Gandhi tweeted in Hindi, “Journalists are being held as hostages, questions are being shielded and problems are being sidelined. The BJP government, which was re-elected in the Lok Sabha elections, is turning a blind eye to the questions of the public.”
