A few years out of the job seems to have had a deleterious impact on the mental health of TMC leader and the former head of Prasar Bharati Jawhar Sircar. Since his resignation in October 2016, he appears to be progressively losing his mental faculties at a breakneck speed, preoccupying himself with spreading propaganda with little regard for facts and rationality.
Continuing his diatribes against PM Modi, Sircar recently took to Twitter to rant against the Prime Minister. However, this time around, the source of mental distress for Sircar was something as fundamental as the bulletproof car for the head of state.
In his tweet, Sircar fulminated that PM Modi’s car is worth more than Rs 12 crores and the Maybach sunglasses he wears are to the tunes of lakhs of rupees. He further insinuated that PM Modi would never leave the perks even after he is defeated.
“Rs 12 crore plus for PM’s car! Lakhs for Maybach sunglasses for new clothes every day. God! This fakeer will never leave these perks — even when defeated,” Sircar tweeted along with a report of PM Modi getting a Mercedes-Maybach S650 armoured vehicle as a part of his convoy.
The report said PM Modi was recently spotted in the new Maybach 650 armoured first at Hyderabad House while welcoming President Putin of Russia. It further added that the car is the face-lifted version of the Mercedes-Maybach S650 Guard that came out in 2019, and gets VR10 protection level, the highest-ever protection provided in a production car. It can withstand bullets thanks to the upgraded windows and body shell and can take an assault from AK-47 rifles.
In addition to this, the car also has the capability to withstand a blast of 15 kg TNT from a distance of just two metres. The windows get polycarbonate coating on the inside, while the under-body has been heavily armoured to protect the occupants from a direct explosion. It has a 6.0-litre twin-turbo V12 engine that generates 516 bhp and about 900 Nm of peak torque. The top speed is restricted to 160 kmph. The new upgrade also features the comforts of the Maybach S-Class which include seat massagers and enhanced legroom.
The price of the car, the report said remains undisclosed, but it surmised it to be upwards of Rs 12 crores, citing the price of the Mercedes-Maybach S600 Guard that was launched in India last year and was priced at Rs 10.5 crores. However, the report also added a disclaimer stating that the final price of the car can be much lower than the Special Protection Group or SPG that takes care of the security of the important people of the country, including the Prime Minister, does not need to pay any import taxes.
Sircar trivialises security of head of state, accuses PM Modi of indulging in vanity
Regardless of the final price of the armoured vehicle, Sircar, through his tweet, tries to insinuate that a state of the art car is not used for fortifying the security of the head of the state but for satisfying the vanity of PM Modi. He conveniently ignores the fact that the armoured vehicle is for the post of India’s Prime Minister and not for the person who is currently occupying the post. The Prime Minister is not going to inherit the car when he retires from public office or when he is replaced by another one.
Contrary to what Sircar would have us believe, a heavily armoured vehicle is an absolutely essential security prerequisite for the head of a nuclear-armed state, especially for a country like India which has two perpetually hostile nuclear neighbours on both its side. The security detail of the leader must include a high-security car that can protect him or her against the eventuality of a conventional, nuclear, biological & chemical attack launched against the leader.
It is astounding to see a former bureaucrat trivialising something as important as security of the country’s Prime Minister. The head of the state represents the country. He or she is not an inconsequential personality whose security can be trifled with. The Prime Minister’s security is paramount, regardless of the political party he or she belongs to, and the country must do everything in its power and means to ensure that the head of the state gets maximum possible protection.
However, for someone like Mr Sircar, for whom hatred for PM Modi has caused him to take leave of his senses, the security of the Prime Minister is a fair game that could be exploited to mount a malicious campaign against his bete noire. Perhaps, Mr Sircar still wants the country to remain backward and be associated with the ‘land of snake charmers’ image, a decades-old construct ossified by the past masters of the former CEO of Prasar Bharati, the Congress party.
Mr Sircar, who switched his loyalty to join the Trinamool Congress party, has not departed from his usual habit of peddling fake news against PM Modi and the Centre. Earlier last week, the TMC leader shared an edited video on Twitter to suggest that PM Modi and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath were greeted with anti-Modi and anti-Yogi slogans during the inauguration ceremony of the Kashi Viswanath Corridor on December 13, 2021.
Twitter adds ‘manipulative media’ tag after Jawhar Sircar tweets edited video
The bureaucrat turned Modi-hater troll Jawahar Sircar, whom Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee appointed as the member to the Rajya Sabha in July this year, was also quick to use the fake, heavily edited video to further his anti-Narendra Modi stance. He shared the fake video coupled with a Tweet that read: “Wow! Protests during Modi’s midnight Kashi Parikrama. Some guts. The Godi Media will not show this.”
After OpIndia reported that the TMC leaders posted a doctored video, Twitter added the ‘manipulated media’ tag to the tweet posted by Jawahar Sircar.
Past antics of TMC leader Jawhar Sircar
This sort of deplorable behaviour from trolls like Jawhar Sircar, however, no longer comes as a surprise for anyone. The TMC leader has many times in the past, indulged in such petty acts to berate the Modi government. On June 7 this year, Jawhar Sircar shared a heavily edited image of Prime Minister Modi bending forward to greet Reliance Foundation chairperson Neeta Ambani, to insinuate that he goes out of his way to be polite to ‘his friends’.
This was not all, when Twitter users fact-checked Jawhar Sircar’s fake claims and revealed that the original picture was that of PM Modi acknowledging social activist Deepika Mondal, Sircar went on to hide the replies to his tweet. However, after being heavily slammed, Sircar deleted his Tweet.
Continuing his shenanigans, Jawhar Sircar, a chronic Modi-hater, who was then the CEO of Prasar Bharti had removed inconvenient parts of PM candidate Modi’s interview during the 2014 elections to appease the Congress party. Following a public backlash, the then Prasar Bharti CEO Jawhar Sircar had acknowledged that chunks of the interview were edited out.
