Press Information Bureau

The Press Information Bureau, commonly abbreviated as PIB, is a nodal agency of the Government of India under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Based in National Media Centre, New Delhi, Press Information Bureau disseminates information to print, electronic and web media on government plans, policies, programme initiatives and achievements.
It is available in 14 Indian official languages, which are Dogri, Punjabi, Bengali, Odia, Gujarati, Marathi, Meitei, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Konkani and Urdu, in addition to Hindi and English, out of the 22 official languages of the Republic of India.
The head of PIB is also the Official Spokesperson of the Government of India and holds the rank of Principal Director General.

WWW Official Site 𝕏 PIBFactCheck

History

The Press Information Bureau was established in June 1919 as a small cell under Home Ministry under the British government. Its main task was to prepare a report on India to be placed before the British Parliament. It was then located in Shimla.
The first head of the publicity cell was Dr. L.F. Rushbrook Williams of Allahabad University who was designated as Officer on Special Duty. Prof. Williams had earlier worked with Sir Stanley Reed on the Central Publicity Board.
In 1941, J. Natrajan became the first Indian to be head the bureau as Principal Information Officer.
The organisation's name was changed to the Press Information Bureau in 1946.
The bureau has been reconstituted many times since independence of India in 1947.

Structure and function

Administratively, the Press Information Bureau is one of the media units working under the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India. It is the nodal agency for public communication and media relations for the entire Union Government of India.
With headquarters in New Delhi, it now has a nation-wide network of eight regional offices and 34 branch offices. Over 60 information officers are presently in position in the bureau. The bureau has information officers attached to different ministries, constitutional bodies and autonomous organizations of the government of India. They are responsible for information dissemination and unpaid publicity for those organizations.
The bureau issues press releases, features, photographs, infographics and videos for giving information to electronic, print and web media on the following matters:

Government planning
Government policies
Programme initiatives
Achievements of the government

The bureau has a Press Facilitation unit for press accreditation and facilitation during press conferences and events that are open for the media. At present, about 2500 editors, correspondents, camerapersons and technicians from print, radio, television and web media are accredited.
Its website contains archives of press releases issued by it since 1947. It has also launched the mobile version of its website and a mobile app.
In November 2019, the PIB set up a fact-checking unit to check government related news.

Heads/government spokespersons

No.	Principal Directors General	From	To
1.	Smt Deepak Sandhu	February 2006	December 2008
2.	Dr. Umakant Mishra	December 2008	March 2009
3.	Smt Neelam Kapur	April 2009	August 2014
4.	Shri Frank Noronha	August 2014	April 2018
5.	Shri Sitanshu Kar	May 2018	September 2019
6.	Shri K. S. Dhatwalia	October 2019	February 2021
7.	Shri Jaideep Bhatnagar	March 2021	July 2022
8.	Shri Satyendra Prakash	August 2022	28 February 2023
9.	Shri Rajesh Malhotra	March 2023	August 2023
10.	Shri Manish Desai	September 2023	March 2024
11.	Smt Sheyphali B. Sharan	April 2024	June 2024
12.	Dhirendra K. Ojha	July 2024	July 2025
13.	Anupama Bhatnagar	August 2025	Incumbent