A few months back, Rajdeep Sardesai, had conducted a completely lame-duck “interview” of Sonia Gandhi. While India Today promoted it as the ‘Biggest interview of the decade’, it turned out to be the ‘fixed interview of the decade’. Questions were asked to Sonia Gandhi about Indira Gandhi and the various aspects of her life which Sonia remembered with surprising clarity. Rajdeep’s tone and body language remained extremely docile, supportive and probably sycophantic. He even repeated his “fought like a tigress” accolade for Sonia, revealing the tone of the interview.
Come 2017 Rajdeep seems to have repeated this feat with another soft-ball interview. This time it was a PR campaign an interview with the Chief Minister of poll bound Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav. And to make sure he conveyed the family man image to the masses, Sardesai thought it apt to include Yadav’s wife and kids in the interview as well.
Social media though saw through his act and panned him:
https://twitter.com/Nesenag/status/828659550014361600
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https://twitter.com/ajayendar/status/828658864337870848
https://twitter.com/ShefVaidya/status/828801191228403712
https://twitter.com/DarrKeAage/status/828665627472719873
https://twitter.com/MaheshJagga/status/828671833347993600
https://twitter.com/rupasubramanya/status/828664214592053250
Rajdeep asked some tough questions like: “Do you get to go on family holidays”, “favourite vacation spot”, “what is your favourite animal”. In all of this, Rajdeep missed out on the environment of the interview, which was an indoor sports facility replete with all sorts of sports gear, while the average Uttar Pradesh resident is still fighting for the basics.
https://twitter.com/somnath1978/status/828654876167073792
https://twitter.com/rupasubramanya/status/828657888977629185
Many on social media reminded Rajdeep Sardesai of his previous outbursts when he slammed other such “love-fest” interviews:
https://twitter.com/dhaval241086/status/828670915617644547
https://twitter.com/dhaval241086/status/828671369613307905
Some even pointed out the obvious difference in tone and tenor between Rajdeep’s above “love-fest” and his interview with Smriti Irani:
https://twitter.com/dhaval241086/status/828659412692770816
Perhaps its time for Sardesai to repeat his tweet from July 2014 once again, this time, targeting himself: