Radio National producer claims India visa denied due to Adani coverage

 


According to Amruta Slee, producer for RN’s Late Night Live, four Australian journalists have been denied visas by the Indian government  because of an ABC report on Adani’s taxation issues. 

The India-born Slee moved to Australia in 1970, and has returned to the country of her birth numerous times.

News site Little India reports that India has not responded to the visa requests of the journalists who wanted to work on a radio series about India after Independence.

“My idea was that the country had undergone enormous changes and the western media has largely not kept up with those changes. So there was everything from politics to society.

“I got a grant from the Australia-India Council which is part of DFAT. And I had set up 16 or 17 interviews in India. These are experts in their fields and ordinary people, up and coming student leaders and people who have been political and economic journalists for a long time.

“So, it was really a broad range of people to give people a good idea of contemporary India,” Slee told SBS

Slee and her colleagues applied for their journalist visas in December.

 “I kept calling and emailing and calling and contacting people and getting told that visas always took some time and that we should wait.

“I called DFAT, who had given us the grant, to ask if they knew what the hold-up was. I called friends who were old India hands, people who worked at embassies, journalists who might have a contact. I sent countless emails, I called Julie Bishop’s office, and I called Delhi.”

Slee said she spoke with a high-placed source in the Australian government who informed her that they had been confidentially advised there was a problem with a story the ABC had done about Adani. 

Slee alleges that a report by ABC TV’s Stephen Long is the reason the visas were denied.

In October last year, reporter Long and the Four Corners team investigated Adani’s dealings and reported on a history of environmental and corporate malfeasance. 

“It was a hard-hitting piece but still it seemed incredible that it could affect our visit. After all, India is a democracy.

‘It was extremely confronting to me to realise that it is also a country which is capable of this,’ Slee added. 

The Consulate General of India, Sydney, has denied the allegations, tweeting “Delay in issuing visas to ABC news team has nothing to do with the issues mentioned in this article. ABC news journalists violated Indian visa rules recently by engaging in activities which were not declared at the time of applying their visas.”

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