Former Union Minister and four-time MP Jyotiraditya Scindia’s decision to quit the Congress party has not only came as a shock to the party but also to its media ecosystem, which had failed to predict the political moves of the Scindia-scion.
The utter shock and panic was quite visible on Tuesday, as one of the party’s stalwarts who had a deep connection with the Lutyens system was now out of the Congress party, hitting another nail on party’s coffin.
Perplexed by the major political development, the ‘liberal-secular’ media ecosystem came up with various conspiracy theories to spin the political event to make sure the first family of the Congress party was kept away from any attack.
In a similar attempt, ThePrint – run by Shekhar Gupta, which has a history of shoddy reporting and peddling fake news, on Tuesday came up with two ‘reports’ to analyse Jyotiraditya Scindia’s decision to quit the Congress party. Interestingly, in an attempt to weave conspiracy theories, both of these reports contradicted themselves.
In a report titled “Inside story of how Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi forced Jyotiraditya Scindia to dump Congress” written by DK Singh, The Print initially claims that Jyotiraditya Scindia decision to quit from the Congress party comes after Mother-son duo of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi considered the former Guna MP as a threat and attempted to sideline him following the electoral success of Congress party in the Madhya Pradesh.
However, ThePrint soon contradicted itself writing another report by linking his exit from the party to a sustained campaign by the BJP contrast to what it had written early in the day blaming the Gandhis for Scindia to leave the party which he had served for 18 years.
In another report titled “BJP’s year-long game-plan in MP that led to Jyotiraditya Scindia’s Congress exit”, journalist Ruhi Tiwari claims how seeds were sown to make Scindia quit Congress and join BJP, as far back as 2013 when the Congress lost its third straight assembly election in Madhya Pradesh.
Further, she claimed that Scindia’s decision to quit the Congress, however, came due to impending Rajya Sabha polls that laid fertile ground for what the party had been trying to do for the last year. Interestingly, the second report contradicts the first as it pins the blame on Gandhis for Scindia’s exit while the first ‘scoop’ claimed that it was BJP’s gameplan to get Scindia to get him into their fold by making him quit the Congress party.
In one article, ThePrint says Scindia was exploring option of joining the BJP since last two months, in other, it claims the ‘plans’ were set in motion soon after the December 2018 state assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. One article credits the BJP for playing the ‘masterstroke’ and getting Scindia to quit Congress while other suggests that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi pushed him away.
Peak monkey-balancing.
