NEW DELHI, August 8: Even as the Government silently prepares the ground for an ordinance on the Prasar Bharati Bill, citing precedent, CEO Surrindar Singh Gill has launched a charm offensive to convince the media that he is a ``martyr'' who is being ``unfairly treated''.Information and Broadcasting Ministry officials are citing the cases of the Depositories Ordinance, 1996; the Depositories (Second) Ordinance 1996; the Sugar Export Promotion (Repeal) Ordinance 1997; and the Industrial Disputes (Amendment) Ordinance 1996. These four were issued when the relevant Bills were passed only in the Lok Sabha. In all cases, lack of time for passage in the Rajya Sabha was considered adequate ground for an ordinance.But the Government is clearly anxious to appear unbiased in its selection process for the new Chairman and CEO (the latter only if Gill is ousted). It has reportedly decided to retain Justice (retd) PB Sawant as Chairman of the Press Council. Sawant will be one of the three members of the selectioncommittee, along with Vice President Krishan Kant and a Government nominee.Gill is doing all he can to remain in office. He has spoken to several politicians, among them S Jaipal Reddy, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Shabana Azmi, Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee. Now he says he tried his best to cooperate with Minister Sushma Swaraj, whom he called on immediately after she took charge. ``I told her I have no illusions of being an autonomous monarch. I am a functionary, I said. I said let's try to work together for six months at least. If it doesn't succeed, I'll quit,'' he told a group of specially invited journalists on Friday. ``But four weeks later, she called me and said I would have to go. I said not in this manner, with no trial. Obviously I don't fit in with their agenda.''Gill talked of several ``pinpricks and pressures'' from the Government, like ``Prasar Bharati not being able to open an account, not being allowed to frame rules and regulations for recruitment, and not being able to holddepartment promotion committees''. ``There was no need to push me that far. I was quite willing to accept Sushma Swaraj as my minister,'' he said.But he says the Government went out of its way to be vindictive towards him by including Clause 6 (b) in the Prasar Bharati (Amendment) Bill which denies him compensation and by selectively using some of the ``3 lakh 60,000 words I have written in my two books, The Dynasty and The Pathology of Corruption, against me''. He said Swaraj was ``hitting below the belt'' and indulging in a ``petty type of cleverness''.Opposition MPs have also accused Swaraj of manipulating the delay and not giving the Upper House enough time to pass the legislation. But Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Lal Khurana said today he had not received any demand from any member to extend the sitting of the Rajya Sabha.
