The Rajasthan government led by Ashok Gehlot has reportedly decided to pass a resolution seeking 33% reservation for women in the legislative assembly. The news was covered by many media portals.
Here is how The Wire has reported it.
The report in The Wire, citing a PTI feed, quotes CM Gehlot saying that Sonia Gandhi has been fighting for reservation for women in parliament and legislative assemblies. He added that after a long struggle the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha but has been pending in the Rajya Sabha. The report also adds that the Congress president wants the five state assemblies where Congress is in power to pass the resolution.
Of course, the report does not state that the Rajya Sabha has been disrupted by the Congress or the analyse how many women are in the Congress’ ranks in the three states. The article also doesn’t discuss the merits of gender-based reservation or question what Congress was doing for all these years they were in power.
However, when the report about the NDA government bringing in 10% reservation for the economically weaker sections (EWS) comes, the style and tone of The Wire’s reportage suddenly change.
This is how they had covered the issue of the NDA government bringing in 10% reservation for the EWS.
The article, published yesterday, on the same day when they had reported the news about 33% reservation for women, in a resolution passed by the Congress-ruled Rajasthan, goes into elaborate deriding of the constitution (124th) amendment bill by falsely alluding that it is a bill for the ‘forward castes’ and calls it “One of the most spectacular acts of cynical legislation this country has seen since the Emergency.”
The Wire has in fact, a number of articles on the issue. Here are some of the other headlines:
The article, published on 15 January, while repeating the blatant ‘forward caste’ lie, embeds a video with the Hindi Title, “Agdon ko Arakshan: Jhunjhuna Bhi, Agenda Bhi”, again alluding that the bill is about giving reservation to the upper castes.
Here are some more headlines The Wire has run recently over the 10% EWS reservation bill.
Many of the articles have mentioned the ‘forward caste’ phrase, giving subtle assumption to the readers that it the bill is an election gimmick or ‘lollipop’ to appease the upper castes by the NDA government. The Constitution (124th) Amendment Bill calls for 10% reservations for economically weaker groups in all castes and religions, not only the ‘forward castes’.
Many such lies and misinformation have been spread about the bill. They are discussed here.
However, the leftist propaganda website The Wire, which is already facing a number of defamation lawsuits for their lies, seems to have left no stone unturned to discredit the bill. The Wire is not new to spreading falsehood and misreports to malign the NDA government. Their lies and misrepresentation of facts have been called out many times.