New Delhi: The Press Council of India (PCI), the country’s statutory media watchdog, has been operating at half its sanctioned strength for almost a year, without a single working journalist or newspaper editor appointed to it, the Indian Express has reported.The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) is yet to formally notify the names of 13 of the 28 members of the Press Council, despite the council nominating people to the positions earlier this year.The 28 members exclude its chairperson, who is nominated by a committee comprising the vice president, the Lok Sabha speaker and a member of the PCI selected from among the council.According to the report, the PCI remained without a chairperson for nearly four months until Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, a retired Supreme Court judge, was reappointed to the post in April this year. She had completed her previous tenure in December, without any further appointments. The PCI operates under the Press Council Act, 1978, which stipulates that the council must reappoint its chairperson and members on completion of their three-year term.Among its 28 members, two are Rajya Sabha MPs nominated by the vice president, three are Lok Sabha MPs nominated by the speaker and one member each is nominated by the University Grants Commission, the Bar Council of India and the Sahitya Akademi. Of the 20 remaining members, 13 must be working journalists – six of them editors and seven working journalists other than editors. Six other members must be from among owners of newspapers of varying sizes, and one member must be manager of a news agency.What has the I&B ministry said about the appointments?Per the Express report, documents showed that the 13 members were nominated by the PCI in batches since last year, under Section 5(3)(a) of the Press Council Act: six newspaper editors were nominated in December, six working journalists in May this year, and the seventh working journalist in July.Further, the PCI sent three communications to the I&B ministry separately – on May 25, July 2 and September 9 – requesting it to issue the Gazette notification under Section 5(5) of the Act. The nominations can officially take effect only after the Union government notifies the names of persons in the Official Gazette.In its latest communication on September 9, the PCI even communicated nominees’ concerns over the delay and requested that the Gazette notification for the 13 members be issued at the earliest. The earlier communication on July 2 also sought the ministry to expedite the process.“This is essential to enable the 15th term of the Council to become fully representative and functional so that it can discharge its regular responsibilities,” the letter had stated. The I&B ministry has now said, as reported by the daily, that the notification to fill the 13 vacancies is at the final stage and is expected to be issued soon after the completion of some requisite formalities.Editors’ Guild reactsResponding to news reports about the press council functioning without members, the Editors’ Guild said it was part of the “progressive diminution and devaluation” of statutory bodies responsible to oversee press freedom.In a statement signed by Sanjay Kapoor and Raghavan Srinivasan, president and general secretary of the Editors’ Guild of India, the body said the mechanism set up in past decades to preserve and improve media standards “stands broken”.It has sought immediate reconstitution of the Press Council, saying it wished the consultative and collegiate process, free of executive interference, was followed in doing so.“A Press Council without the press is a contradiction in terms and violative of parliament’s own intent. The Guild calls upon the government of India to rebuild the Press Council of India and restore to journalists of the country the institution created to protect them,” the statement said.Prolonged delayThe Council has continued to hold meetings even if at half strength, with its last meeting held in June, and another is scheduled for later this month.However, concerns about the vacancies have been brought to light in the parliament too. In February, Rajya Sabha MP Sasmit Patra had highlighted that it had been over a year since the PCI’s term had expired urging the government to take steps to ensure the council’s functioning in the interests of a “free, fair and responsible press”.Patra, a member of the Biju Janata Dal who represents Odisha in the Rajya Sabha, had called on the government to “treat this matter with the seriousness it deserves”. He had said it ought to “take immediate steps” to complete a new chairperson’s appointment and ensure the constitution of a new council as this would be “essential to uphold democratic values” and “strengthen media accountability”.Meanwhile, the Mumbai Press Club had raised concerns that the PCI was being reduced to a non-functional entity, alleging that at the core of the crisis is the attempt to oust two important and active journalist bodies from representation in the Press Council – the MPC and the Editors Guild of India – while also questioning whether the delay was deliberate.In January, the Delhi high court had upheld its previous judgment giving the Mumbai Press Club a place among the ‘associations’ of journalists that will tender names for nomination into the PCI in spite of the scrutiny committee denying it a spot. However, the bench had dismissed the Editors’ Guild of India’s petition against the scrutiny committee’s decision to reject its claim.