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Nitin Gadkari slams Rajdeep Sardesai at the India Today Conclave over ‘achche din’

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Nitin Gadkari slams Rajdeep Sardesai at the India Today Conclave over ‘achche din’

At the Indian Today Conclave, Nitin Gadkari, the Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Shipping and Water Resources sat down with Rajdeep Sardesai, notorious for his biased coverage of events, for a discussion on the politics of the country ahead of the 2019 general elections.

At one point during the chat, Rajdeep Sardesai asked Gadkari if the Prime Minister was willing to go to the people claiming ‘achche din’ had arrived during his campaign for the 2019 elections. And Gadkari, in his blistering form took Sardesai to the cleaners with his reply.


In his response to the question, the Minister began by clarifying that ‘Achche din’ never really comes if people choose to remain dissatisfied with their current state of affairs. However, he clarified that ‘Achche din’ mean ‘Roti, Kapra, Makaan’, that is, food, clothes and homes for everyone. He then went on to highlight the work being done by the government through the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana that seeks to provide homes to the economically disadvantaged sections of the country. He also mentioned the irrigation facilities provided to farmers during the tenure of this government.

Nitin Gadkari also mentioned 16 lakh crores of investment in the Sagar Mala project and the 4 lakh crore worth of investment in the modernization of ports across the country. He also said that special economic zones were being developed with lakhs of crores of investment which would provide employment opportunities to hundreds and thousands of people across the country.

Finally, he said that the only problem is the media has to go into great detail to comprehend how the promise of ‘achche din’ was being fulfilled by the NDA government.

Rafale Chief debunks the accusations of ‘overpriced Rafale deal’ hurled by the Congress party

OpIndia Staff
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Rafale Chief debunks the accusations of ‘overpriced Rafale deal’ hurled by the Congress party

The Congress Party has been using a document of the Rafale company to claim that India had paid for the aircraft in comparison to Egypt and Qatar.


These unfounded claims have been put to rest by Rafale Chief Eric Trappier in an interview to Times Now. While refusing to divulge the actual details which would result in the higher value of the entire deal, he said that the difference was due to higher capabilities and nature of the contract between India and France.

When asked for the reason for the higher price, he said, ‘you have to compare what can be compared‘. Mr Trappier said the price of the plane was same for all countries if the same contract were to be signed for all countries. ‘It is irrelevant to say that the price is different. The scope is different. We are not selling the same type of product around or same type of capabilities in here to other countries, so this is a matter of difference,’ he clarified.

He said that the number of years of support given to India is not the same as that offered to other countries. If that were taken into account, the price would turn out to be the same he told. The total support given to India has a broader scope as per Rafale chief.


The clarification offered by the Rafale chief clearly takes the wind out of the Congress sails as far as accusations of a ‘higher price’ being paid by the BJP led government for Rafale aircraft.

Meanwhile, the French president has made an interesting remark that he wouldn’t interfere if the government were to reveal some details to allay the concerns of the opposition regarding the Rafale deal. After the clarification offered by the Rafale chief, this demand may also lose its significance as the national interest would be jeopardized if the details were to be revealed.

Indian Railways to impart skill development by setting up vocational training centres on its unused land

OpIndia Staff
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Indian Railways to impart skill development by setting up vocational training centres on its unused land

The Piyush Goyal-led Indian Railways has tied up with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to impart vocational training for the children of its 3 lakh employees who work as trackmen and gangmen. This skill development initiative has been approved by the Prime Minister’s office, following a presentation made by senior railway officials.

In order to facilitate the setting up of these NSDC centres, Indian Railways will allot plots on its land along railways stations. These centres would be located near Railway colonies so as to make it easier for the children to attend classes.

As per a railways official, they weren’t just looking at land and were even hunting for spare rooms which could be used by NSDC to run its centres. Railways have till now shortlisted 100 suitable locations for the skill development centres.

The main aim of the scheme is to impart skills to the children so that can build a career out of them. The final aim is to try and place the children in various companies with the help of this course.

In total, Indian Railways has about 47,300 hectares of unused land, though 90% of it runs parallel to its railway tracks. This renders a considerable amount of the unused land, incompatible for commercial purposes. A part of this unused land as per officials could be used for setting up the NSDC centres.

This proposal to impart skill development program using railways infrastructure had also been discussed in 2015. As per a “PIB” press release, the railways was to make its sparse infrastructure available for Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE). MSDE, in turn, would the use it to impart skill development programs for the unemployed youth, mainly in rural and remote areas.

It remains to be seen if the latest initiative of the Indian Railways is also extended to students beyond those whose parents are employed by it.

Karti Chidambaram files caveat before SC in anticipation that ED might move court to secure arrest

OpIndia Staff
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Karti Chidambaram files caveat before SC in anticipation that ED might move court to secure arrest

Karti Chidambaram, the son of former Finance Minister P Chidambaram has filed a caveat in the Supreme Court to hear him before passing any order on the reprieve granted to him yesterday by the Delhi High Court. The Delhi High Court on Friday had passed an order which said that if he is granted bail by a trial court in the CBI case, the ED cannot arrest him till March 20, the date of his next hearing.

Karti has done it in anticipation that the ED might move to the SC against the order and try to arrest him before March 20. Karti’s lawyer Arun Natarajan in the INX Media case has stated that they have filed the caveat in the SC to intimate and hear them if the ED challenges the Delhi High Court order.


Karti’s CBI custody ended on March 9th. Yesterday, the Patiala House court had extended Karti’s CBI custody till March 12. The court had also allowed the CBI to bring Karti face to face with his arrested charted accountant Bhaskaran in the Tihar Jail. The same court will now hear his bail plea on March 15. The Delhi High Court provided Karti interim relief on an event of arrest by ED till March 20.

According to reports, Karti feared that the ED will immediately arrest him after that. He had moved to Delhi High Court after the SC directed him to withdraw his petition there and approach the Delhi HC for challenging the summons of ED.

Karti’s lawyer has also stated that the CBI wanted to do a polygraph test on Karti and they have given a written petition claiming that there can be no compulsion regarding the test.


Karti was arrested by the CBI on February 28 from the Chennai airport. His CA, Bhaskaran was arrested on February 16. Karti was arrested for his alleged involvement in the INX Media scam.

Author who questioned Rahul Gandhi in Singapore indicts Congress for ‘fake news’

OpIndia Staff
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Author who questioned Rahul Gandhi in Singapore indicts Congress for ‘fake news’

The author who asked Rahul Gandhi a question at his interaction in Singapore, Prasenjit K Basu, has commented that the videos posted on @INCIndia and @OfficeOfRG were a classic case of fake news.


In his response to a question by CNN New 18 journalist, Mr Basu said that:

What happened was I asked a very simple and factual question. Rahul Gandhi was unable to answer it. He responded with a counter question, which was almost juvenile. He asked ‘What is your hypothesis?’ Well, the question was to him. I of course had a hypothesis. I asked why was the performance poor under his family’s leadership? He didn’t answer. All of this was edited out of the video which was posted on the @INCIndia and @OfficeOfRg twitter handle, which have been posting fake news videos.

Prasenjit Basu went on to say that Rahul Gandhi had failed to answer the question posed to him, even after being give three attempts. On the second attempt, Rahul was asked a follow-up question with additional details. The moderator had then provided him with a third chance, as per Mr. Basu. He went to say that the doctored videos were meant to mislead the public.

Mr Basu. while on this matter, went on to say that the per capita GDP growth in the period of 1947 to 1989 was lower than the world average, and it was a disgrace for a country which was one of the poorest on earth. When asked if he was bullying Rahul Gandhi, he denied the same. He claimed that he allowed Rahul to answer and the moderator had thanked him for asking a succinct and to the point question.

Here is the full video of the interaction between Rahul Gandhi and Prasenjit Basu:


The official of the Congress party hasn’t yet deleted the “doctored video”, where flashes and scene changes are placed strategically to save Rahul Gandhi the embarrassment of not being able to answer succinctly put questions.

This is the altered video:


While putting up this edited video, the the Congress Twitter handle hailed Rahul Gandhi for “gracefully handling detractors and calling their bluff”, without even acknowledging the nature of the video.

Of course, while the Congress party is justified to try its best to protect Rahul, surprisingly controversial journalist Sagarika Ghose also came to his defence by abusing Mr Basu.

This wasn’t the only embarrassment that Rahul Gandhi had to face in this interactive session held in Singapore. During the event, many gems emerged where Rahul Gandhi made ridiculous statements about how the Congress party used to measure the peace in Kashmir by the number of planes landing in the state and expressed his wish to connect all the MRI machines in the world.

Sagarika Ghose gets called out by the author she abused for asking tough questions to Rahul Gandhi

OpIndia Staff
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Sagarika Ghose gets called out by the author she abused for asking tough questions to Rahul Gandhi

The story of controversial journalist Sagarika Ghose and Singapore based author Prasenjit Basu who posed a tough question to Rahul Gandhi during the latter’s visit to the county doesn’t seem to be ending.

We had reported yesterday how Ms Ghose had launched an abusive, elitist and anti-Hindu tirade against Mr Basu, for asking a question which stumped the Congress President.

The question posed pertained to asking Rahul why India’s per capita income grew slower as compared to the world when “his family” was in power. It was followed up by asking why did the per capita income see a much faster growth soon after Rahul’s family relinquished the Prime Ministerial position of the country. The Gandhi dynast failed to come up with a convincing answer and the Congress later put up a doctored video to mitigate the damage.

This “humiliation” had possibly caused a lot of grief who put out this tweet:


The hatred, contempt and elitism dripping from the tweet surprised many including Union Minister Babul Supriyo who expressed grief at Ms Ghose’s manner of expressing disagreement.

Prasenjit Basu the author, decided to respond to this tweet by revealing that he and Sagarika were students at the same college and had even acted in various plays together, including one which was directed by Sagarika’s father Bhaskar Ghose. He even claimed that they were close friends:


This “candid admission” though irked Ms Ghose who soon decided to refute his claims of being “close friends”, and co-actors in multiple plays:


Basu though wasn’t willing to take it lying down and proceeded to call out her “selective amnesia” by claiming that her father had directed the play Troilus and Cressida, where they had both acted. He then proceeded to mock her as a Congress stooge masquerading as a journalist:


Ms Ghose though hasn’t yet come back with a response to Basu’s latest allegations, which includes any sort of a denial of the same.

Aaj Tak managing editor rejects conspiracy theories about govt putting ‘pressure’ on media

OpIndia Staff
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Aaj Tak managing editor rejects conspiracy theories about govt putting ‘pressure’ on media

Supriya Prasad, the Managing Editor of the Aaj Tak and India Today news channels, has said that he never faced any kind of pressure from the government regarding news broadcasts or running ‘favourable news’.

Supriya Prasad was speaking at an event called ‘Media Mahakumbh’ organised at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) in New Delhi, where he answered questions put by Abhishek Mehrotra of Samachar4Media.

“I have never seen political pressure. Sometimes we do get press releases on behalf of the government, there are requests to cover events but that’s it. It can be called ‘request’ not ‘pressure’. I hereby say that there is no pressure on media from the government,” Prasad was quoted as saying.

Prasad said that being involved with a trusted institution minimises the possibility of political pressure. On being asked again, possibly to clarify his stand, he expressed categorically that there was no pressure on the media from the government.

Prasad though added that certain journalists might get under pressure, but that was due to their own reasons. Speaking for the media house he works for, he added that Aaj Tak has never faced any pressure from the government with regard to any news broadcast.

Perhaps hinting at the reasons journalists might get under pressure of their own, Prasad stated that being unbiased is the basic principle of journalism and indulging in the politics of ruling or opposition party is not journalism. He disapproved of ‘agenda journalism’.

Supriya Prasad also disapproved of journalists being too aggressive on social media, especially with regards to their ideological or political preferences. He said that this had ‘harmed’ journalism.

“Be it myself or anyone else, we all vote for a political party and are inclined towards it but by declaring such things on social media, we gradually become a biased journalist,” he said.

Supriya however rejected the possibility of social media replacing television journalism, as he argued that social media did not have the same levels of credibility and trust.

The comments by the Managing Editor of India Today and Aaj Tak is interesting in wake of many journalists from the media group being openly vocal about their political and ideological leanings on social media, especially Twitter.

The comments also come at a time when journalists like NDTV’s Ravish Kumar and India Today group’s very own Rajdeep Sardesai, while trying to raise the bogey of ‘undeclared emergency’ or while commenting on CBI raids against NDTV promoters, have tried to insinuate that the Narendra Modi government was trying to muzzle voices in media by putting pressure.

Why is Sunil Deodhar, BJP Tripura prabhari asking the CM to clean all septic tanks before moving in?

OpIndia Staff
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Why is Sunil Deodhar, BJP Tripura prabhari asking the CM to clean all septic tanks before moving in?

Sunil Deodhar is widely touted as the architect behind BJP’s win in the recent Tripura elections.  He has been a man on a mission over the past three years since he was made the ‘prabhari’ of Tripura by BJP president Amit Shah in November 2014. Today, Deodhar took to Twitter to give a rather odd advice to the new CM of Tripura.

Deodhar said that the CM Biplab Kumar Deb should get all the septic tanks of all the ministers’ quarters cleaned, before moving in. The suggestion might seem odd, but he backed it up with an astounding claim: He said that this was necessary since, in January 2005, a woman’s skeleton was found in the septic tank of then CM Manik Sarkar’s quarter! He also claimed that the case had been suppressed.

The allegation seems to be true. There are a few media reports from that period, which document this shocking incident. Skeletal remains including the skull and nine bones of the shin, forearms and ribs were found in a tank connected to a toilet close to the house meant for security personnel and other members of the chief minister’s staff, inside the CM’s official residence. The discovery was made when the tank was being cleaned by workers of the Agartala Municipal Council.

The incident had shocked the locals in Tripura and the report suggests that the CM had initially constituted a CID probe, and eventually handed over the case to the CBI. The media report also quotes a source in a lab who said that prima facie the skeleton could of a rape victim.

Later, the local Congress President Samir Ranjan Barman claimed that skeletal remains recovered from the septic tank of the chief minister’s residence was that of Rina Thapa, who was aged between 13 and 17. He claimed that his contention was based on documents he had received from the CID and the forensic laboratory in Chandigarh. Barman added that the Nepali girl’s parents had been forced to leave Tripura following her killing.

He also asserted that the girl had been killed between December 29, 2000, and January 4, 2005, a period when Sarkar was the occupant of the official residence. He claimed that the tank was last cleaned on December 29, 2000, and there was nothing found in it then, hence the crime had occurred post that date. Manik Sarkar had stayed in that residence since 1998.

Author Dinesh Kanji, in his book on Manik Sarkar, claimed that Barman’s claims were taken lightly by the media as they were not convinced of his integrity. It is surprising that such a ghastly news from a ruling CM’s house, never made it to the prime-time debates of Indian television. Nor is this story popular enough in the minds of the Indian electorate. No doubt, if the same story had emerged from the house a BJP CM, it would have been hung around his head for his whole life.

TMC workers beat up, molest Visva Bharti students who were protesting against cutting of trees

OpIndia Staff
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TMC workers beat up, molest Visva Bharti students who were protesting against cutting of trees

TMC workers allegedly beat up students of the famous Visva Bharti university on Friday while they were protesting against a deforestation initiative of the Public Works Department (PWD). These trees were supposedly being cut to aid the widening of a road in Shyambati area of West Bengal’s Bolpur town. This town also houses the university.

The assaulted students include women and two foreign students hailing from Poland and Canada. The Canadian student Lavrenty Repin had to be hospitalised as a result of the attack. The whole assault allegedly took place in front of the cops who failed to intervene in the matter.

Reports claim that after learning about the student protest, TMC’s local leader Nurul Huda Kaji and his associates reached the spot and started indiscriminately thrashing the students, to try and remove them from the spot. It has also been alleged that the TMC workers molested women during their attack.

The videos of the attack which have since then emerged have shown the students and supposed TMC workers having heated exchanges in front of the police. These workers allegedly threatened to extol revenge and later proceeded to beat the students up to try and end the protest.

Soon after the attack, students were rushed to nearby hospitals for treatment, following which, a heavy police force removed the TMC workers and other activists from the spot. The whole protest by the students though turned out to be moot, as the cutting of trees resumed after everyone was disbursed from the spot.

As a result of this attack, a case was filed by the students against three TMC leaders including Kazi Nurul Hoda who is the president of the party’s Ruppur anchal committee.

This incident caught the attention of social media users who reacted with anger and shock:


The police seem to have acted in the matter and as per reports, five supposed TMC workers were arrested on Saturday morning. As per Station House Officer of Santiniketan police station, five people have been arrested in connection with the matter and cases of sexual harassment have been lodged against them.

DNA raises Hindu radicalism bogey over slum dwellers being forcefully converted to Christianity, deletes later

OpIndia Staff
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DNA raises Hindu radicalism bogey over slum dwellers being forcefully converted to Christianity, deletes later

The DNA published a report on the alleged attempt by missionaries to lure slum dwellers into Christianity by offering them a better lifestyle, a better house and education for the children. It was alleged that they even tried to drug them by offering them samosas which made those who ate them feel dizzy. A bystander intervened at this point and later, the Police were informed who said an investigation will be launched into the matter.

In the report by DNA, for some reason unbeknown to any of us, the media outlet thought it was a good idea to add a paragraph on the rise of Hindutva under Yogi Adityanath. In a report on the crime allegedly committed by Christian missionaries, the paragraph made one wonder why was it even added to the report in the first place.


The paragraph, which has been deleted after people raised the issue, read, “Since Yogi Adityanath became Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, radical groups have become emboldened, openly proclaiming its Hindu roots and putting pressure on police. Uttar Pradesh is home to 220 million people of which a fifth are Muslims.”

Interestingly, the portion trying to monkey balance the report about forced conversion to Christianity didn’t stop there. The DNA report had three additional paragraphs talking about Bajarang Dal allegedly preventing a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy from getting married alleging that it was Love Jihad. It also included the statement by UP BJP spokesperson regarding the matter. These portions too have now been deleted from the report.

From the content of the report, one wonders if DNA was insinuating that the slum dwellers were “Hindu radicals”, without a shred of evidence, merely for resisting religious conversion. Or they live in an alternate reality where such attempts at religious conversion are merely the ramblings of the paranoid minds of ‘radicals’.

One also wonders the need to bring up Bajarang Dal, Yogi Adityanath and Love Jihad in a report about missionaries forcefully converting slum dwellers into Christians. The seriousness of the report where the slum dwellers also alleged being drugged by these missionaries seems to have been lost in the cacophony of political correctness.

The DNA has quietly deleted the paragraph without offering an apology.

It is hardly a secret that Christian missionaries have been carrying out religious conversions in the country and altered the demography of the nation in many critical areas. In recent times, several Christian missionaries have been arrested across the country for forcible conversions to Christianity.

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