NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — Helle Lyng, the Norwegian journalist who challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi over press freedom in Oslo in May, says India has cancelled her visa and stopped her from travelling to speak at the Bharat Summit in Hyderabad.
“I got a visa to India and was supposed to leave this morning to attend the Bharat Summit in Hyderabad. I had been invited as a panellist and speaker on the future of media and press freedom. But «orders from above» in the Ministry of Home Affairs have cancelled my visa,” Lyng, who works for the Oslo daily Dagsavisen, wrote on X on Wednesday.
The Indian government has not commented on her account, and the Indian embassy in Norway has issued no statement.
A session on press freedom
Lyng is listed as a speaker on the second day of the summit, on November 14, in a session on media and democracy alongside Sangeeta Baruah Pisharoty, president of the Press Club of India. The session is due to be moderated by Pawan Khera, the Congress MP who chairs the party’s communications department.
In a video message addressed to Home Minister Amit Shah, Lyng said there were still 48 hours before her session and asked to be allowed to attend. She said the Indian embassy in Oslo had been helpful throughout, and that it was the home ministry that had denied her entry “even though I have gotten a visa and had political clearance for the conference”.
The question in Oslo
Lyng linked the decision to the question she put to Modi in May, at a joint press appearance with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in Oslo, when she asked why he does not take questions from what she called “the world’s freest press”. Modi did not answer.
The exchange spread widely online. At a later briefing by Sibi George, a secretary in India’s foreign ministry, Lyng pressed officials again, asking: “Why should we trust you?” She later said she had faced online abuse and had her social media accounts suspended for a time after the episode.
Modi has not held an open press conference in India since taking office in 2014, a record that press freedom groups have repeatedly criticised.
