Miffed at Saifai coverage, did UP govt order blocking of news channels?

After the Akhilesh Yadav government faced stinging criticism for spending crores on the Saifai Festival, cable operators in UP have alleged that they have been instructed to black out certain TV channels by ‘higher authorities’. According to a report on The Times of India, some local cable operators have told reporters that they have been specifically asked to block Times Now and India News. TOI reports: “President of the Cable Service Consumer Protection Committee Ambika Prasad Ojha said: “The telecast of Times Now and India News has been stopped across UP because the CM got offended by their negative coverage of the Saifai Mahotsav.”” [caption id=“attachment_1338637” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Akhilesh Yadav. Agencies.[/caption] The UP government had been facing flack right from the day news leaked out that Bollywood stars like Salman Khan, Madhuri Dixit and Alia Bhatt were slated to perform at the Saifai festival organised in Etawah, Mulayam’s hometown in Uttar Pradesh. We noted in _Firstpost_ how the festival is merely an exercise in political muscle-flexing and is meant to establish the hegemony of the Yadav clan in UP politics. Most media outlets criticized the move citing the disastrous conditions in which the Muzaffarnagar riot victims are living in the refugee camps. The report points out that though the cable operators didn’t say that they have received a government order to black these channels out, while some seemed to be at a loss for an explanation, others pointed at pressure from ‘high up’. Read the complete Times of India report here.