Kashmiri journalist denied award due to 'political pressure'

A private educational institute in Maharashtra's Pune city announced a peace award for Kashmiri journalist Safina Nabi but did not confer it on her, with the scribe claiming her name was dropped due to "political pressure".

The MIT-World Peace University in its statement on Thursday cited a "communication gap" in the entire episode and stated the institute is considering inviting the award winner to 'Bhartiya Chhatra Sansad', an annual event organised by it.

The institute recently announced the 'Journalism for Peace' award for three independent journalists - Tora Agarwala, Safina Nabi and Sonal Pateria. The awards were scheduled to be given on October 18.

However, according to Nabi, she was informed by the institute on October 16 that the award announced for her has been cancelled due to "political pressure".

"A week ago, I received an email from the institute, it was directly from its director. I searched about the university and saw the jury names for the awards and found the names of the juries prominent (in the field of journalism), and I gave my consent for the award," Nabi told PTI.

She said that later, the institute provided her with a single-point contact person for further logistical arrangements.

"I was supposed to come to Pune on October 17 but on October 16 afternoon, I received a call from an unknown female, who introduced herself as a faculty member and informed me about the award cancellation, citing political pressure and threats from different political groups," the journalist claimed.

Nabi then approached the single-point contact and to her surprise, the person did not know anything about it, but he later called back and confirmed the same, she said.

"I told the person that whatever communication the institute wants to do regarding the cancellation, it should be through an email. After some time, Dhiraj Singh, the director (the Department of Media and Communication) at the institute, also gave me the same information. He was also not ready to put anything in email," she said.

Nabi said that on October 17, the institute once again reached out to her and tried to calm her down by stating that the institute would call her at a bigger event as a guest of honour and speaker.

"I then reached out to one of the jury members and they were also quite shocked. They were not aware of the entire episode. The jury members then decided not to attend the event in protest of what they (institute) were doing," she said.