MoD DPRO removed for misidentifying peak

MoD DPRO removed for misidentifying peak
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, FEB 15: From the day Pramod Bhatnagar, Director Press Relations Officer (DPRO) in the Ministry of Defence, made the mistake of wrongly identifying the peak on which Defence Minister George Fernandes chose to get himself photographed on December 31, he knew he was a marked man. The Defence Minister, who had gone to Drass to spend New Year's Eve with the jawans, wanted him out, say officials in the Press Information Bureau.

While senior PIB officials under the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, including Principal Information Officer Narendar Krishna, worked overtime to see that Additional Principal Information Officer (Defence) Bhatnagar was not hounded out with immediate effect, the MoD did not waste any time to get him out.

Bhatnagar chose to identify the peak in question as 5353 -- a contentious peak on India-Pakistan border at Drass, the second coldest place on earth, for which both the countries had fought over and laid claim to. Not yet occupied by India despite three pitched attempts to aquire control, the peak was wrongly identified as an Indian peak in a press release issued by Bhatnagar. A red-faced Army pointed out the mistake to the MoD, which in turn, wanted the man out. Since then, Bhatnagar has been relocated in All India Radio and will be assuming charge as Additional Director General soon.

While Information Service officers, the cadre to which Bhatnagar belongs, feel that a diligent, bright officer has been ill-treated by the Defence Ministry, it is learnt that Bhatnagar's present posting minus the trappings of his previous ministry, is a punishment posting. ``Bhatnagar has never made a mistake in his career so far and he apologised for this mistake but the MoD wanted him out,'' rued officials in the PIB.

While Bhatnagar seems to have been ``punished'', it is learnt that Information and Broadcasting Ministry is trying to fix the blame for Doordarshan's near blackout of the Gujarat quake on a DD official.

According to sources, while senior officials at DD have been allowed to go scot free, juniors are being singled out for the mistake. It may be recalled that DD continued with its Republic Day telecast, despite private channels flashing the quake news on January 26. DD got into the act quite late in the day after I&B Minister Sushma Swaraj summoned officers to the Ministry.