The Prime Minister has always preferred to talk about politics on the floor of the House, says his media adviser

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has always preferred to talk about politics on the floor of the House but in the last five years “Parliament has not given him enough chances to speak”, the Prime Minister’s media adviser Pankaj Pachauri said on Friday.

But the interaction between the Prime Minister’s Office and the media “has improved in the last two years”, he added.

“The output of news channels in the last two years is 25 per cent politics and about 10 per cent entertainment and similarly sports. But those are the issues for which the PM has not talked too much,” Mr. Pachauri said.

“He has preferred to talk about politics on the floor of the House and in the last five years the Parliament has not given him enough chances to speak,” he added.

Mr. Pachauri said Dr. Singh had spoken on issues related to development on several occasions but did not get due coverage.

“Around 85 to 90 per cent of the notifications from the PMO are on developmental issues like education, infrastructure, science etc. But only 2.1 per cent of them got coverage on news channels and 4.5 per cent in newspapers,” said Mr. Pachauri.

“The PM has talked about development but most of the interaction on the issue is not registered,” he added.

Mr. Pachauri added that Dr. Singh had in the last decade given 1,158 speeches and there were over 1,600 press releases on the PMO site, but the media does not find the topics interesting.