Press Council of India Gets 13 New Members | CLAT GK

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 08 OCTOBER 2026

The Centre has reconstituted the Press Council of India (PCI) by nominating 13 new members — six editors and seven working journalists other than editors. According to a report in The Hindu published on Thursday, 8 October 2026, the nominations were made through a notification issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting this week. The Council is headed by Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai (retd).

The notification invokes a precise chain of statutory powers: clause (a) of sub-section (3) and sub-section (5) of Section 5, read with sub-section (1) of Section 6, of the Press Council Act, 1978 (37 of 1978). For a CLAT aspirant, that one sentence is a compact lesson in how a statutory body is composed, who nominates its members, and how long they serve. Before these nominations, The Hindu reports, the PCI had 14 members: five Members of Parliament, six representatives of newspaper owners and three experts drawn from the Bar Council of India, the University Grants Commission and the Sahitya Akademi.

What the Press Council is

The PCI is a statutory, autonomous body set up under the Press Council Act, 1978, mainly to preserve the freedom of the Press and to maintain and improve the standards of newspapers and news agencies in India. It is often described as a quasi-judicial body because it hears complaints — both complaints against the press for breaching journalistic ethics, and complaints by the press about interference with its freedom. Its remit is the print medium and news agencies; it is not a regulator of television or digital platforms.

Its main sanction is moral rather than penal. Under Section 14 of the Act, after giving a hearing, the Council may warn, admonish or censure a newspaper, news agency, editor or journalist, or disapprove of their conduct. Under Section 15(4), its decisions under Section 14 are final and cannot be questioned in any court of law. The Council cannot impose fines or imprisonment; its authority rests on publicity and peer standing.

How the 28 seats add up

The 13 nominees fill the largest block of the Council. Put the statute and the report together and the structure is easy to remember: 13 working journalists (6 editors + 7 others), 6 newspaper owners/managers, 1 from news-agency management, 3 experts (nominated by the UGC, the Bar Council of India and the Sahitya Akademi) and 5 Members of Parliament — a total of 28, plus the Chairman. The design is deliberate: working journalists and owners from the industry form the majority, so the press is largely judged by its peers, while legislators and outside experts add an element of public accountability.

The nomination process is also designed to keep the government at arm’s length. For the journalist and owner categories, the Act requires panels of names, twice the number of seats, to be invited — by the retiring Chairman for every Council after the first. The Central Government’s role at the end is to notify the names. In practice, reconstitution has often been delayed by disputes over eligibility of nominating associations; a 2025 report in Moneylife noted that the term of the 14th Council had expired on 8 October 2024 and that the Mumbai Press Club had approached the Delhi High Court seeking the Council’s reconstitution.

A short history

The first Press Council was set up on 4 July 1966 under the Press Council Act, 1965, on the recommendation of the First Press Commission, with Justice J.R. Mudholkar as Chairman. It began functioning on 16 November 1966, which is why India observes National Press Day on 16 November. The 1965 Act was repealed in 1975 and the Council abolished during the Emergency. A fresh statute, the Press Council Act, 1978, was enacted on similar lines, and the Council was re-established under it in 1979.

Press freedom in the courts: the essential cases

Although Article 19(1)(a) does not mention the press, the Supreme Court has consistently treated press freedom as part of it. In Romesh Thappar v State of Madras (1950), the Court struck down a ban on the entry and circulation of a journal, holding that freedom of speech includes freedom of circulation. In Brij Bhushan v State of Delhi (1950), decided the same year, it held that pre-censorship of a periodical was an unconstitutional restriction. Both rulings contributed to the First Amendment, 1951, which widened the grounds in Article 19(2). Later, in Indian Express Newspapers v Union of India (1985), the Court recognised that the press plays a vital role in a democracy and that excessive levies on newsprint could be examined for their effect on press freedom.

Analysis: why the composition matters

A self-regulatory council is only as credible as its membership. A Council without its full complement of working journalists cannot properly reflect the profession it oversees, and pending complaints can pile up. Filling the 13 journalist seats therefore matters for the Council’s functioning. The larger policy question — often debated in law-school discussions — is whether a body whose strongest weapon is censure can effectively regulate a fast-changing media landscape, and whether its mandate, confined to print and news agencies, needs updating. Those are questions for Parliament; for the exam, the safe ground is the statute itself.