Some news channels and their anchors have been well known for blatantly peddling their political agenda. Rajdeep Sardesai has been called out time and again for his anti-Modi bias and tendency to hail Congress while using all resources at his disposal to belittle the BJP.
Yesterday, BJP spokesperson Amit Malviya was invited to Rajdeep’s show on India Today TV over a debate on the PM’s slogan for “Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas”. As many media houses and left-leaning journos have been doing since the Modi government won a second term, Rajdeep tried to spin the argument claiming that under the BJP government minorities are not safe and whether the PM’s slogan can also mean protection of the minorities.
India Today, and for that matter, many of the mainstream media channels had run the story of the Gurugram alleged attack on a Muslim man claiming that it was a hate crime where the man was forced to chant Jai Shree Ram and was threatened to be fed pork. India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai had conducted a debate on 27 May over the issue where BJP’s Amit Malviya had slammed Rajdeep for his selective outrage and had exposed his bias of giving communal hues to petty crimes.
Yesterday, it was found that the CCTV footage examination by the Gurugram police concluded that the alleged attack on the Muslim man was not a hate crime but a case of minor scuffle by a drunken man. The victim’s claims of his skullcap being thrown and him being forced to chant ‘Jai Shree Ram’ were nowhere to be found in the initial statement given to police.
However, the social media handle of India Today had initially not shared the video clip with Malviya’s response. Many Twitter users had noticed it and had asked India Today to share the full version where Amit Malviya is seen exposing Rajdeep Sardesai’s agenda.
https://twitter.com/TajinderBagga/status/1133217091757064192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
After several Twitter users raising the issue, finally, India Today shared the video clip with Malviya’s response to Sardesai.
https://twitter.com/amitmalviya/status/1133252778908889089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In the debate, Malviya had called out Rajdeep Sardesai for deliberately giving communal hues to the Gurugram and Begusarai incidents. He had also asked him why he had not held Kamal Nath accountable for the incident from Madhya Pradesh where some cattle meat smugglers were beaten up by Gau Rakshaks as law and order are a state subject.
Malviya had also asked Rajdeep why had he not run reports on the Mathura case where a Hindu lassi vendor was attacked and killed by Muslim men who did not want to pay after drinking the lassi. He had also asked Rajdeep over his show not reporting the incident of Meerut where a minor Hindu girl was abducted and forcefully converted into Islam.
This is not the first time India Today channel withheld view from public view. During the elections, the channel had advertised an interview with Rahul Gandhi, asking viewers to ‘watch’ it. But later they had published only a text interview, and no video of the same was released.