New Delhi: Noting that it has been over a year since the statutory Press Council of India (PCI)’s term expired and close to two months since its chairperson demitted office, Rajya Sabha MP Sasmit Patra on Tuesday (February 10) urged the government to take “immediate 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, noted during a special mention in the House on Tuesday that the 14th council’s term expired in October 2024 and its previous chairperson, former Supreme Court Justice Ranjana Desai, demitted office this past December.Calling on the government to “treat this matter with the seriousness it deserves”, Patra 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”.The PCI is a statutory, quasi-judicial and autonomous body whose two-pronged remit is to preserve freedom of the press and to “maintain and improve the standards of newspapers and news agencies”.It has 28 members excluding 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.Two members 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.Among the 20 remaining members, 13 must be working journalists – six of them editors and seven not – six members must be from among owners of newspapers of varying sizes, and one member must be manager of a news agency.These 20 members working in the media industry are nominated into the PCI by a process that involves ‘associations’ of such persons, following clearance by a scrutiny committee within the council, submitting names for consideration.While a number of new members have been notified since the previous council’s expiry in 2024, there are currently no members from the working journalist category. PTI had reported last month that the process of constituting the council cannot take place in the absence of a chairperson.In August last year the government had noted in parliament that the process of nominating working journalists to the PCI was sub-judice in the Delhi high court.Last month the high court 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 dismissed the Editors’ Guild of India’s petition against the scrutiny committee’s decision to reject its claim.As cited by the bench, the scrutiny committee had rejected the Editors’ Guild’s claim in September 2024 on the grounds that a number of documents it submitted were not notarised, “no proof” was given of “submission of minutes to competent authority”, that its “certificate of competent authority [didn’t] mention conducting of business continuously” and that it had not provided a declaration saying its claim “is valid and free from all encumbrances/disputes/litigation”.In a statement last year the Mumbai Press Club alleged that the PCI’s scrutiny committee rejected its and the Editors’ Guild’s claims as their representatives in the last council were vocal about issues such as the detention of journalists in Kashmir and the en masse layoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic, which it said was “perhaps … not appreciated in certain quarters”.