NEW DELHI: India’s government has cut off advertisements to at least three major newspaper groups in a move that executives and an opposition leader said was likely retaliation for unfavourable reports.

Critics have said that freedom of the press has been under attack since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government first took office in 2014 and journalists have complained of intimidation for writing critical stories. Now the big newspaper groups, which have a combined monthly readership of more than 26 million, say they are being starved of government ads worth millions of rupees that began even before Modi was elected to power last month with a landslide mandate.

“There is a freeze,” an executive at Bennett, Coleman & Co that controls the Times of India and The Economic Times, among the country’s biggest English-language newspapers, said. “Could be (because of) some reports they were unhappy with,” the executive said, seeking anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press. Around 15% of the Times group’s advertising comes from the government, the executive said. The ads are mostly government tenders for contracts as well as publicising government schemes. The ABP Group, which publishes The Telegraph that has run reports questioning Modi’s record on everything from national security to unemployment, has seen a similar 15 percent drop in government advertisements for around six months, two company officials said. “Once you don’t toe the government line in your editorial coverage and you write anything against the government, then obviously the only way they can penalise you (is) to choke your advertising supply,” the first ABP official said.—Reuters