Ministers’ timing gaffe irks PMO

New Delhi: The government’s media planning went haywire as three of its top ministers ended up addressing the media at the same time on Thursday. The three addresses, by finance minister Arun Jaitley, law and justice minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, and information and broadcasting minister M. Venkaiah Naidu were aimed at highlighting the Narendra Modi government;s achievements half way down its tenure and also rebutting the Opposition charges on failure of demonetisation.

The PMO is understood to be miffed at the faux pas and has asked the ministers to be more careful in future while managing the timings of important events.

All the three events, though on different locations — Mr Jaitley’s at North Block, Mr Prasad’s at the headquarters of BJP on Ashok Road, and Mr Naidu’s at National Media Centre — were scheduled for 3 pm on Thursday.

Sources in the government stated that with the three media events taking place simultaneously, the government was unable to ensure optimum  utilisation of these pressers.

It is understood that the PMO was miffed at the “mismanagement” of these events, considering that these were planned to highlight the achievements of the Modi government over the past two and a half years. It is learnt that most of the news channels did not broadcast these events live, or were forced to cut each of them short due to several senior cabinet ministers speaking at the same time.

Sources stated that these events were planned individually by the concerned ministries and it should not be taken as the failure of the government’s media units.

They pointed out that one of this event had taken place at BJP headquarters and was a political function which should not be blamed on the official machinery.