BENGALURU: The office of the Public Relations Officer, Ministry of Defence, has issued the following rejoinder to an article published in The New Indian Express: This is in regards to the article published by your esteemed organisation on 19th December 2018, titled ‘Defence officials refuse to give land to BBMP; infra projects suffer’.
The news article falsely and with intentions questionable has tried to put bad light on the Ministry of Defence and its officials. The facts have been largely ignored and story has been one-sided.
The article claims that the MoD has refused to give land to BBMP, for which, when requested, no proof or evidence has been submitted. Further, the news item mentions that the relationship between MoD officials and BBMP officials have gone sour. Whereas, the meetings between both the authorities have taken place regularly with both the authorities discussing various aspects about the land deal.
We would like to express our dissatisfaction with the way in which this article was sought to be published. The mail was sent at 6:24 pm well after the working timings of the central government offices. Moreover, the office of PRO still got back to the person with the reply that the MoD officials had been alerted and the response would be given tomorrow (19th December, 2018). In spite of this the article has been published without taking input from us.
TNIE Response: The purpose of the article was to highlight the long delay in executing certain crucial infrastructure projects for which defence lands are required. Publishing the article without waiting for the MoD response was an oversight, not intentional. We also regret the misleading headline.