India, July 11 -- "India's voters prefer direct contact. PM Modi perfected that," said a senior Indian diplomat as the issue of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's no-press-conference policy travelled to New Zealand with him, on Friday. The one-way-communication method came under scrutiny for the third time in less than two months during his overseas engagements, with a journalist in Auckland becoming the latest to publicly question it, and one in Norway recalling a similar moment with her.

The New Zealand journalist asked India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Secretary (East) Rudrendra Tandon: "Why doesn't Prime Minister Modi take questions from the media?"

Tandon's reply, at first, was: "It's not appropriate for me as a civil servant ...