Department of Information and Public Relations Sikkim
The Department of Information and Public Relations is the Government of Sikkim's nodal information agency, based in Gangtok. It collects official news from across the Himalayan state and disseminates press releases, photographs and publications to local newspapers, national agencies and broadcasters. The department describes itself as both watchdog and mouthpiece of the state government: it publicises the government's activities, development schemes and programmes, and it supports the growth of Sikkim's media through grants, equipment and journalist-focused initiatives. Its releases, issued from Soochna Bhawan, are the routine source of official Sikkim news.
Origins Under the Monarchy
The department's own history traces it to the era of the Sikkim monarchy, when it was one of the premier departments but carried a different name. In the early 1960s it was known as the Publicity Department, a fact the department supports from the print line of the government bulletin Sikkim Herald dated June 1964. In the 1970s the name changed to Directorate of Information Service, as shown in the Sikkim Herald print line of 1971, and then to Press and Publicity Department, shown in the print line of 1976. There are no written histories of the early department, the official account notes; its reconstruction rests on the recollections of retired senior bureaucrats and on surviving Sikkim Darbar news bulletins. The sequence of names, preserved in the government's own bulletin, documents an information office that already existed, and was already publishing, well before Sikkim's merger with India.
Renaming and Reorganisation After the Merger
After Sikkim's merger into the Indian mainstream, the department's workload increased manifold while its infrastructure and manpower lagged behind. In keeping with Government of India directives, it was renamed the Information and Public Relations Department in 1978, the name it retains. The government invited M. V. Desai, then Director of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in New Delhi, to report on the information task in Sikkim in 1977. On the basis of that report, new sections were created — Publication, Advertising and Visual Publicity, District Information Offices and a Photo Division among them — and the required manpower was trained at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. The department's history, citing the 2011 Raj Bhavan volume on the evolution of the press in Sikkim, presents this reorganisation as the moment the department was made fully prepared for its expanded post-merger role.
Sections and How the Department Works
The modern department is organised into specialised sections alongside its administrative and accounts wings: an Advertisement Section, a Film Section, a Photo Section, a Media Section and a Publications Section. The Media Section is the newsroom of the system. It collects information from District Information Centres in the state's districts, where District Information Officers, assisted by Senior Information Assistants and Junior Information Assistants, gather official news. That material is disseminated through press releases, press notes, feature articles and press conferences. The other sections handle the supporting crafts of government communication: advertisements placed with media, films and visual publicity, official photography, and the department's own publications. Official press releases issued through this machinery — on subjects from pollution-control inspections to departmental meetings in all districts — appear on the state government portal under the Information and Public Relations Department's name, making it the single attributed source for government news in Sikkim.
Soochna Bhawan
For almost three decades the department was housed in a building with limited space and poor storage for its records, books and equipment. In February 2014 it shifted to its own purpose-built headquarters, Soochna Bhawan at 5th Mile, Tadong, in Gangtok. The department describes the building as a multi-facility complex with spacious rooms, an exhibition hall, a conference hall, a photo studio, a video studio and a library. The move gave the Advertisement, Film, Photo, Media and Publications sections a shared modern base, and Soochna Bhawan has become the department's public address: its press releases are issued from there, and state-level media events, including National Press Day celebrations, are organised under its name. The building symbolises the department's transition from a cramped publicity office of the monarchy era to a full-service communication department.
Publications and Government Information
Publishing is one of the department's founding functions, inherited from the Sikkim Herald tradition of the 1960s. Its Publications Section produces government publications and programmes through which, in the department's words, it empowers people by facilitating the free flow of government information, using publications, programmes, advertising and exhibitions to invite public participation in socio-economic development. In a mountainous state with dispersed settlements, printed and exhibited publicity historically carried government schemes to places that newspapers and broadcasts reached weakly. That publications-and-exhibitions role continues alongside the modern press release system, and the department's library and exhibition hall at Soochna Bhawan support it. The feedback function has also been modernised: the department developed a state government feedback portal to gather public suggestions on government schemes and general administration, extending its two-way role between citizens and government into an online channel launched by the Chief Minister at Gangtok.
Support for Journalists and Media Development
Unusually among government departments, Sikkim's IPR Department runs an explicit programme of support for the media it also supplies with news. It instituted the Positive Journalism Grant in 2005-06 to acknowledge journalists' contributions, and it provides an annual grant to the Press Club of Sikkim for its development. To help modernise the press and other media in the state, it has distributed laptops, computers, cameras and printers to media practitioners. The department frames these measures as facilities and benefits to encourage a vibrant media that caters to the needs of the people of Sikkim. It also honours journalists publicly: on National Press Day in November 2022, for example, the department held a function at Gangtok to honour journalists for their services, addressed by the IPR Minister, who promised maximum support from the department and the state government to the media fraternity.
National Press Day and Media Events
The department is the organiser of Sikkim's official media calendar. Its National Press Day celebration for 2025 was scheduled at Gangtok on 25 November 2025 on the theme of safeguarding press credibility amid rising misinformation, with journalists to be recognised for ethical and responsible reporting and addresses by invited speakers from national media and digital education, in the presence of the Chief Minister. Events of this kind show the department working as convener of the state's media community as well as its news supplier, bringing working journalists, students and officials into the same hall. Combined with its workshops, grants and equipment support, the events programme makes the IPR Department a standing institution in Sikkim journalism rather than a mere press-release office.
Role in Sikkim's Information Life
Sikkim is a small state, and its government information system is correspondingly concentrated. One department, headquartered at Soochna Bhawan, gathers news from every district information centre, issues the releases that local newspapers and national agencies publish, places the government's advertising, produces its publications and films, photographs its events, and funds and equips parts of the media that report on it. That breadth, and a documented institutional history stretching from the Publicity Department of the early 1960s through the 1978 renaming and the 2014 move to a dedicated headquarters, makes the Department of Information and Public Relations a central actor in how Sikkim is reported — both inside the state and by the national media that rely on its feed for news from Gangtok and the districts.
