EMRA issues legal notices to media group, BU employee

PEMRA issues legal notices to media group, BU employee

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) on Wednesday issued legal notices of Rs 50 million damage suit each to two newspapers and a private TV channel of a media group, its chief executive and an employee of the Balochistan University.

The media group has launched “an image tarnishing and defamatory campaign” against PEMRA and the government by trying to deceive the honourable courts as well as the public through concocted stories, according to a PEMRA press release.

Responding to the stories carried by that media group’s newspapers on Monday, the PEMRA said that Gul Muhammad Kakar was not an employee of the authority, but an employee of the University of Balochistan and his services were requisitioned by PEMRA on deputation for a period of one year in 2008, and on March 2 he was relieved from PEMRA and repatriated to the Balochistan University.

Kakar has been trying to get himself absorbed in PEMRA permanently and was pressurising it through various sources to relax rules in his favour, it added.

Therefore, all the propaganda made by Kakar through a selected media group is baseless, false and fabricated. He is pursuing vested agendas of a media group by exhibiting immorality, which is in violation of conduct of a government employee and it was an obligation of the Balochistan varsity to take cognisance of the matter, the press release said.

Kakar has now started malicious propaganda against his repatriation from PEMRA in order to fetch undue and illegal favours, as he aimed to be inducted in PEMRA. He is not only approaching PEMRA through various political figures to retain his services on deputation, but has also started threatening and blackmailing PEMRA officers of dire consequences if he was not retained, it said.