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Remembering Jayalalithaa

OpIndia Staff
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Remembering Jayalalithaa

Former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the leader of the AIADMK party, J Jayalalithaa passed away on 5th December, near midnight. This was after a prolonged medical battle, shrouded in secrecy. She was admitted to Apollo Hospital in Chennai on 22nd September and was undergoing treatment there. A statement put out by the hospital revealed that she suffered a massive cardiac arrest on 4 December and could not recover from that.

The news of her passing away evoked a vast range of emotions. Her die-hard fans were obviously distraught at the sad news of their leader passing away mid-way into an unprecedented second consecutive term as Chief Minister. Not only her core supporters, but people from across the country paid rich tributes to her, and in the process, some unknown or relatively lesser known facets of her life came to the fore.

Journalist J Gopikrishnan, who was at the forefront of breaking the 2G scam, remembered the late former CM’s role in pushing the news into the mainstream so that it wouldn’t die down:


Another social media user recalled the testing times Jayalalithaa had to go through during her long political career. A clipping from an interview given by her, where she revealed how she was manhandled and attacked in the Tamil Nadu assembly by MLAs of the DMK, which ended up in her leaving the assembly in tears and a torn saree:


Jayalalithaa claimed that day she took a vow to not step into the assembly till Karunannidhi was unseated as the CM, and she fulfilled her vow in about two years, when she took oath as Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister.

Some also reminisced about her stint in the Rajya Sabha, when she tore into the turncoat politicians of Jammu and Kashmir, while speaking on the Constitutional Status of Jammu & Kashmir :


The full speech (pdf link) makes for a very compelling reading.

Some also remembered her bold statement in 2003, in relation to the anti-forcible conversion law passed by her in Tamil Nadu, when she rebuked no less than the Pope:

Many recalled her stand at the time of the Godhra massacre where she called out all the major political parties for their biased and minority-appeasing view of secularism:

It is very strange and saddening to see that when such acts are perpetrated against the minority people in the country, all political party leaders rush to condemn them, but when the majority people are subjected to similar perpetration of heinous crime, not a single political leader has so far issued a statement condemning this barbaric crime. It is not as though a crime is a crime only if it committed against the minority community people and not so if it is committed against the majority community.

Another of her interview which was widely cited was when she took on Karan Thapar. Thapar was as venomous and pretentious as he always was, but a cool Jayalalithaa matched him for each punch, without once losing her temper, even though Thapar tried his best, and finally showing her displeasure with style:


Jayalalithaa may have swung between supporting the different political formations at the centre, she may not have had a blemish-free political career, but her views on many of the taboo topics of even today, are worth appreciating.

Media spins Baba Ramdev’s statement on Mamata Bannerjee

OpIndia Staff
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Media spins Baba Ramdev’s statement on Mamata Bannerjee

Baba Ramdev has often been the target of media hit-jobs, like this horrific one where we showed how NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain cut, spliced and edited an interview of Baba Ramdev to make it look as if he had said something completely different. Something similar has happened again, but luckily no “chhota-mota” video editing was done.

Mamata Bannerjee has gone paranoid in her attack on PM Modi and demonetisation, possibly because it has hurt her corrupt party-men the most. Hence the media has been focusing on her for the past few days, just as it does on every passing “superstar” who could be seen as an anti-Modi face, like the forgotten Hardiks and Kanhaiyas.

Last week, Baba Ramdev had visited Kolkata and had dropped in at the West Bengal’s Governor’s residence for a courtesy call. As he was exiting the Raj Bhavan, media caught up with him and questioned him with regards to demonetisation and Mamata Bannerjee. Soon media was flooded with reports like:

Mamata fit for PM?
Mamata fit for PM?

Baba Ramdev has been an open supporter of PM Modi and such a sudden support for Modi’s current rival to become PM was obviously shocking. So did Baba Ramdev actually say this? Especially when Didi is gunning for the anti-Modi space? Let us see the video where Baba Ramdev spoke to the reporters:

Initially Baba Ramdev does appreciate Mamata’s simplicity of living and her efforts to curb corruption. Then the media asks him specifically whether Mamata is eyeing the PM’s post. Baba Ramdev’s reply to this question is reproduced below verbatim:

See, you have raised a very big question. In democracy, anybody can become the Prime Minister by working towards it. When the son of a tea-seller can become the Prime Minister, then Mamata di can also work towards it. Whats the problem in it? This is the democratic right of everyone.

Even after this, the media tried to make Baba Ramdev say that Mamata should be the PM after which he gave evasive answers. In short, at no point in time, did Baba Ramdev specifically say that Mamata Bannerjee had the credentials to become the Prime Minister. At best, his statement was that anybody can try to be the Prime Minister and Mamata should also try.

This was reiterated by Baba Ramdev himself when he took to Twitter to correct the media spin:


But by now, the damage has been done. The media has successfully portrayed Baba Ramdev as part of the Mamata camp, even though Baba Ramdev himself has denied this multiple times.

The truth about Nitin Gadkari arranging 50 chartered planes for his daughter’s wedding.

OpIndia Staff
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The truth about Nitin Gadkari arranging 50 chartered planes for his daughter’s wedding.

VVIP weddings, especially the ones even remotely associated with the BJP seem to have become a regular target since demonetization. The narrative being peddled has been fixed at:

When the common man and the poor are struggling in long lines at the bank, how come the very rich politicians are able to afford such lavish weddings.

The first instance being the wedding of Janardhan Reddy’s daughter against which even Kejriwal spoke in the Delhi Assembly. Though when it comes to reporting such big fat weddings of opposition party members especially from then Congress, the usual suspects conveniently decided not to make a hue and cry out of the same.

The latest victim in the wedding saga appears to be Union Minister Nitin Gadkari. Yesterday it was reported by the Hindustan Times that Nitin Gadkari for his daughter’s wedding on 4th December planned to charter a whopping 50 planes in the evening in order to ferry his invitees. This report was carried by various media houses[1][2][3].

The final amount would have been huge as normally a medium-sized chartered flight costs about Rs 3.4 lakhs per hour (The duration is calculated as per the total time the aircraft’s engine was running), plus the airport fees and crew maintenance costs are extra. The total cost per hour would in itself have amounted to Rs 17 crores. Obviously the usual outrage followed


After about 6 hours of the story getting published, ANI carried a report in which Nitin Gadkari’s office completely denied the 50 flights claim. It stated that only 10 non-scheduled flights (i.e. not operated by commercial airlines) had landed in Nagpur the previous night according to the records of the Air Traffic Contol.

Out of these, a minimum of 3 were said to be government operated flights of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and of MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The other flights included private jets of Ramoji Rao, Zee’s Subhash Chandra, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thakeray and Ramdev Baba. The rest if at-all sourced by Mr Gadkari might have amounted to maximum 3 in number, assuming they are not the flights of some other VVIPs who have not been named.

Apart from this Twitter user Spamnath Bharti carried out his own analysis of the report wherein he tried to prove that not just the part about the 50 jets was false but other claims like no flights from anywhere in the country to Nagpur being available on the 3rd and 4th December too were unfounded.

  • First the claim that no flights to Nagpur were available on the 3rd and 4th December:
  • Second as found out by him in a Marathi newspaper that the wedding muhurat was scheduled at 8:40 AM in the morning hence it calls into question HT’s claim of guests flying in to Nagpur in the evening.


As also pointed out by him in this thread, in a report published in the Indian Express, it was mentioned that very few VIP’s were invited to the wedding and most of them would attend special programs arranged on the 6th in Nagpur and the 8th in Delhi where top dignitaries like the PM, President etc would attend. The report also states that Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Venkaiya Naidu and others were present for the wedding that is on 8:40 AM. Hence they should have landed sometime on the 3rd thereby giving further credence to the ANI report and almost fully debunking the 50 chartered planes flying into Nagpur on Sunday evening claim by HT.

The Hindustan Times though today reported some different figures. A new report today quoted the office of Mr Gadkari as saying that only 12 chartered planes ferried VVIPs for the wedding. The same report went on to quote “sources” from the Nagpur airport authority saying least 28 chartered planes from diverse locations landed at the airport till 5 pm on Sunday, but no details of this figure were provided. Even today’s Times of India report quoted the figure of around ten planes landing in Nagpur.

All in all the original story of 50-odd planes looks very weak now.

Shocking: Former Finance Minister Chidambaram makes embarrassing mistake

OpIndia Staff
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Shocking: Former Finance Minister Chidambaram makes embarrassing mistake

After the scheme of demonetisation was announced by the Government of India, we have suddenly seen a spurt in the number of economists and experts of finance. Case in point was how The Hindu’s Suhasini Haider, tried to twist the statement of the Left-leaning foreign minister of Greece, into an anti-demonetisation statement. The Hindu was today slammed by the Greek embassy for deliberate misquoting his words.

Back home, we had the former Income Tax officer and IIT pass-out Arvind Kejriwal making one bizarre claim after another. We had trashed each of his ridiculous lies in a series of posts, after which one seriously wondered how he could have been an Income Tax officer.

Now another person, who should have known his stuff better, has fallen from the pedestal. Although a staunch dynasty stooge and a Congressman, P Chidambaram was regarded as one of the financial brains of the country. He has been the Finance Minister of India for multiple terms and as such, can be expected to be good with facts, logic and numbers. But today he dispelled such myths by revealing his ignorance with this tweet:


Chidambaram had claimed here that Rs 13860 crores, out of the Rs 65000 odd crores reported to be declared during the Income Disclosure Scheme which ended on 30th September, were actually not there at all, non-existent. Was this true? Not quite.

In a clearly worded press-release, the Ministry of Finance laid out the following facts:

1. After final reconciliation the revised figure of declarations received and taken on record was Rs. 67,382 crore which had been made by 71,726 declarants. (This was the Rs 65000 crore odd figure which Chidambaram referred to, again off by a few thousand crores)

2. Two sets of declarations of high value were not taken on record in the above figure because these declarations were found to be suspicious in nature being filed by persons of small means:

a. First by Mr. Abdul Razzaque Mohammed Sayed and family who filed a total declaration of Rs. Two lakh crore (Rs. 2,00,000 crore).

b. Second by Mr. Mahesh Kumar Champaklal Shah for an amount of Rs.Thirteen Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty crore (Rs.13,860 crore).

The release further stated that these 2 sets of declarations, which were never included in the figures taken on record, were later investigated, and now, had been rejected since they were suspicious. Hence the Rs 2 lakh crores and the Rs 13860 crores (which Chidambaram referred to) were never included in the Rs 65000 odd crores (which Chidambaram referred to)

As such, since they were never included, the rejection of these figures has no effect on the original figure of Rs 65000 odd crores. Thus India’s former Finance Minister was grossly wrong in stating that there was a Rs 13860 crores hole in the IDS scheme.

It actually doesn’t take a genius to figure this out because Rs 213860 crores (the total value of the declarations rejected) is far more than the total IDS figure taken on record i.e. Rs 67382 crores. Even a school student will tell you CANNOT subtract Rs 213860 crores from Rs 67382 crores. But sadly Mr Chidambaram did not get this small bit of logic.

And this man was our Finance Minister!!!!

Greek Embassy slams The Hindu for misquoting their minister in an anti-demonetization article

OpIndia Staff
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Greek Embassy slams The Hindu for misquoting their minister in an anti-demonetization article

After demonetization, many media persons thronged to get on the ground reactions from Indian citizens, politicians and anyone and everyone. Suhasini Haider, the deputy resident editor and diplomatic affairs editor of The Hindu decided to take it a step further by going international with her reporting and interviewed Greece’s alternate foreign minister Mr George Katrougalos of the ruling Syriza party.

Syriza essentially translates into ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’ and whose political ideologies include, Democratic socialism, Left-wing populism, Anti-capitalism and Alter-globalization. It in some ways is a U-turn party, after it came to power promising an end to the stringent austerity measures and ended up heaping even more stringent ones instead.  In a report on 26th November co-written by her, in the story headline Mr Katrougalos was portrayed as calling Demonetization as a “Draconian move”.

On face value the Greek Minister calling it a draconian move was hypocritical to say the least as his party itself as part of the austerity measures had imposed a weekly withdrawal cap of 420 Euros or roughly Rs 30,000 which is much less considering the higher cost of living.

Soon after the piece was published many talked about the veracity of a visiting foreign minister criticizing the internal policies of the guest country.


Some commented about her strange choice for an interview


On 3rd of December, The Hindu published this clarification put out by Panos Kalogeropoulos the Ambassador of the Greek Embassy in New Delhi

With reference to excerpts of the Greek Alternate Foreign Minister’s interview to The Hindu (“‘Demonetization is a draconian move’,” Nov.26), the Embassy of Greece wishes to declare that some comments by the Alternate Minister concerning recent monetary measures by the Indian government have been presented out of context and thus led to an oversimplification of their meaning.

The Minister was referring to European practices and has explicitly stated that he does not want to make judgment on internal affairs of which he does not have in-depth knowledge.

The clarification is nothing but an indictment of the style of reporting of Suhasini Haider and The Hindu. As was made evident by the Greek authorities, they were anguished by the fact that the report misquoted the Minister which led to an extreme oversimplification of what he wanted to actually say and stated that he did not with to make any judgement based on a country’s internal policies of which he has no knowledge of.

The fact that The Hindu, which originally reported the news, had to carry this clarification which in itself slammed The Hindu, gives us a hint as to the amount of criticism and pressure they must have been under, from the Greek embassy and officials. It is very likely that they felt extremely upset that their foreign minister was used as a pawn by Suhasini Haider, to settle domestic scores in India.

After the clarification people were quick to react:


as a response Suhasini Haidar tweeted that


Diplomacy might constitute praising the host country whether one means it or not but it certainly may not constitute criticizing a country and its internal issues especially when one has little or no knowledge of the same.

Journalist wrote fake report to prove rapes during Jat agitation, to be prosecuted

OpIndia Staff
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Journalist wrote fake report to prove rapes during Jat agitation, to be prosecuted

In February this year, many parts of Haryana saw violent protests by the members of the Jat community, who were demanding reservations in government jobs and educational institutes for themselves.

Although Jat leaders had been putting forward such demands for long, the agitation was triggered by the perceived “success” of Hardik Patel, who got the Patidar community to agitate in a similar fashion in Gujarat.

Hardik became a household name and was promoted as a fiery “student leader” challenging the “establishment”. He received support from many political leaders and the media was soft on him as they saw in him a challenger who could defeat BJP in Gujarat, Narendra Modi’s home turf.

With this background, Jats too decided to renew their reservation demands with similar protests in Haryana, where BJP had formed government for the first time. In around 10 days, the protests became violent and witnessed widespread destruction of government and private property. At least 30 people were killed too as police forces tried to stop the rampaging protesters.

Apart from arson and loot forming part of these violent protests, there were claims that the protesters had raped some women who were travelling in private vehicles at Murthal in Haryana on the Delhi-Ambala national highway on the night of 22nd February.

The claims, mostly spread through the social media and dismissed as rumours by the police, got in national limelight when the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted about it:


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The police, however, denied such incidents taking place. They claimed that there were no credible evidences that hinted at such a gruesome crime taking place. But seeing the gravity of the matter, the Haryana government formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe into the alleged incidents of rapes.

Meanwhile two reports published in the mainstream media claimed that there were credible evidences and eyewitnesses to the alleged rapes.

First one was published in The Tribune, which quoted owner of a dhaba saying that a victim had come to his dhaba in naked condition. However, when ABP News asked him about the same, he denied being a witness to any such incident.

Another eyewitness, a truck driver, also claimed that he had seen nothing and was in fact asked by the media persons to claim otherwise. This was analysed in detail by the website Media Hitjobs in this article. You can watch the relevant videos there.

The other report was published by Firstpost.com, which was more explosive as it claimed to have account of a rape victim. Filed by a reporter named Tarique Anwar, the report narrated a depressing and shocking story of gangrape. It quoted the victim, her husband, her mother, and even police officers.

Firstpost had published the story on 29th February, and the tweet about the same still exists on their official Twitter page:


However, when we tried to access the story today, we found that Firstpost had removed it.

We accessed this story after a newsbreak informing that Punjab and Haryana High Court had permitted was suggested by its Amicus Curiae to prosecute of a journalist who had fabricated evidence in the Murthal gangrape case. A Facebook post by a lawyer claimed that the concerned journalist was Firstpost’s Tarique Anwar, who had recorded voice of his female friend and passed it off as the account of a rape victim’s mother.

To confirm this claim, we talked to the Firstpost’s editorial team, and got to know that Tarique Anwar was indeed found guilty of malpractices during an internal inquiry and was removed from his job in April this year.

Firstpost suspected his credentials when an SP quoted in the report denied ever speaking to any reporter named Tarique Anwar. As it turned out, he had made up the entire report with imaginary quotes! An archived version of the report can be read here.

To the credit of Firstpost, the report by Tariqe Anwar was withdrawn and a clarification cum apology was issued subsequently that read as:

“REPORT WITHDRAWN: On 29 February, 2016, Firstpost published a report by a staff correspondent headlined “Cops told us to be quiet for sake of honour’, Survivors of Murthal violence describe their ordeal.” After a detailed internal inquiry, following a strong denial of the report by the local police, we were unable to corroborate the claims of the women quoted therein. Consequently, we are withdrawing the report with apologies to our readers. – Editor”

Not just the report was withdrawn, the reporter was fired from his job by Firstpost too. When asked where Tarique Anwar was employed currently, Firstpost couldn’t confirm his current status. But after some investigations we could find out that Tarique Anwar is currently employed with the Times Group. A profile on IndiaTimes.com confirms him being associated with the Times Group, with his latest report published only yesterday.

The incident proves how unreliable and risky the mainstream media has become. Not only did a reporter invent quotes of victim and policeman to support a narrative he wanted to build, but even after being caught and fired for this unethical behaviour, he could get a new job. Ethics don’t matter in the mainstream journalism?

Nonetheless, looks like the law will catch up with the lying reporter, as the High Court’s Amicus Curiae has suggested prosecution of Tarique Anwar for misleading the court. SIT constituted by the state government had also found no proof about what this reporter claimed. Further, reports suggest that Anwar admitted to his crime of fabricating evidence in the court.

But will the media allow one of its own to be taken to task? Or will they cry “Emergency” and “Attack on Press freedom” if the charges are framed against the lying journalist?

After all only a few days back, many leading Indian journalists had shared the following article by the leftist propaganda blog Scroll, which tried to indirectly shield acts of a journalist who was found guilty of defamation by a court:

Journalism means licence to lie, fabricate, and defame?
Journalism means licence to lie, fabricate, and defame?

(note: this article was updated after Times of India corrected its tweet about the possible prosecution of the journalist)

The Hindu lies to prove that government is not getting support on cashless economy

S. Sudhir Kumar
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The Hindu lies to prove that government is not getting support on cashless economy

“3 CMs opt out of digitisation panel” – screamed the headline on The Hindu today, in a piece that was yet again out to belittle the entire process of demonetisation and its ancillary activities. Further it claimed: “Only Chandrababu Naidu and Shivraj Singh Chauhan will remain members”.

This was reported on Page 13 of The Hindu on December 2, 2016:

The news
The news

Please note the date. December 2, 2016. The story also tells us that “Mr. Naidu leads the Telugu Desam Party, which is a BJP ally, and Mr. Chauhan is from the BJP.” It goes on to tell us Manik Sarkar refused because of the following (emphasis mine):

“Mr. Sarkar was the first to publicly refuse the Centre’s offer. Despite the Union Finance Minister’s insistence that he join the panel, Mr. Sarkar stayed firm. “I opposed the decision because it created a disorder in our economy and also 75 to 77 people have committed suicide.”

75 to 77? Am impressed with this attention to detail. Committed suicide? Doubly impressed with how natural deaths that have nothing to do with either a suicide or demonetization have now been made main stream narrative. For a detailed rebuttal on this topic, please read this article by Rupa Subramanya.

Anyway, let’s come to the date. On December 2, 2016 we are told that “Only Chandrababu Naidu and Shivraj Singh Chauhan will remain members”.

At 4:41 pm, on November 30th, 2016, Niti Aayog announced the setting up of a Committee of CMs with N Chandrababu Naidu as Convenor:



The tweet also linked the pdf document with full details of the scope and charter of this committee formed to help in the “Implementation of digital payment systems in India”.

The committee
The committee

Do you see that there are names of 6 Chief Ministers in the committee formed on November 30th? Do you also see that the names of Nitish Kumar and Manik Sarkar are not even there?

So if we assume that this list by NITI Ayog was published after the Chief Ministers quoted by The Hindu refused, then how come Narayanasamy’s name is still there? And if this list was published before the refusal, why are the names of Nitish Kumar and Manik Sarkar not there?

Do you also see that there are Chief Ministers representing the TDP, BJP, Congresss, BJD and Sikkim Democratic Front, so not just two Chief Ministers as The Hindu’s report claims?

Here’s more. Chandra Babu Naidu has convened a meeting of this committee on December 1st, 2016. This was a video conference meeting. Telugu channel ETV has covered this news in their nightly 9 pm (~11th minute) bulletin. Below is a snapshot taken during that bulletin:

The Meeting
The Meeting

Do you recognize the face? It’s neither Chandrababu (you can see him at the bottom right corner) nor Shivraj Singh Chauhan – the only two Chief Ministers left on the panel as The Hindu claims. The governments of Odisha and Madhya Pradesh were represented too (from the brief report, we didn’t get to see if the CMs were present).

And on the morning of December 2nd, 2016, “India’s National Newspaper since 1878” tells its readers that there are only 2 CMs left out in a panel that had already conducted its first meeting a day before!

I am starting to wonder why the media is making it so easy to counter them! Come on folks, you should make it difficult for us to rebut!

From Indigo Airlines to Indian Army – Mamata Banerjee imagines conspiracies to remove her

OpIndia Staff
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From Indigo Airlines to Indian Army – Mamata Banerjee imagines conspiracies to remove her

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has gone all guns blazing against the Modi government and their demonetisation scheme, has now taken the fight to the next level – where she is blaming the Modi government of getting rid of her using tools like Indigo Airlines and Indian Army.

First her party claimed that there was a conspiracy to kill her after an IndiGo plane, which she was traveling in, hovered over the Kolkata airport due to traffic congestion, and now entire last night there was a drama where she virtually claimed that the Indian Army was planning a coup in her state.

It all started when the army deployed itself at the Vidyasagar Setu toll plaza near her office, Mamata spooked and locked herself in her office refusing to leave until the army withdrew. The situation came into national limelight after Mamata Banerjee took to Twitter to air her grievances against the Army.



She again reiterated her demands, about an hour later.


Things escalated so much that the Army’s Eastern Command, headquartered at Kolkata, had to send out series of tweets stating that it was a routine exercise being carried out not just in West Bengal but in all North Eastern states, and that the whole exercise was being carried out after informing and coordinating with the West Bengal police.


However, Mamata Banerjee accused the Army of misleading people:


This was not only bizarre, but very dangerous situation where a state government was not willing to trust the Indian Army.

As it turns out, the Army was conducting exercises on toll areas to gather statistical data about load carriers that could be made available to the Army in case of a contingency. In an interview to TV channel ABP Ananda, toll manager of Plasit toll plaza about 90 Kms away from Kolkata, had claimed that the exercise had been taking place for the last 3 days at the orders of the NHAI. The interview was aired last night at around 10:00 PM.

Not just that, it turns out that this was a normal routine exercise by the Indian Army that had happened in previous years too at various places, but Mamata Banerjee made it a huge issue this year, claiming that it was an attack on democracy. And obviously, her party declared it signs of Emergency.

The same points were confirmed in a press conference carried out by the Eastern Command of the Indian Army today. Army reiterated that the exercise was an annual activity and was carried out during 19-21 November 2015 at the same locations. This year’s original dates were 27-28 November, but where changed to 30 Nov-2 Dec due to the Bharat Bandh call given by some opposition parties to protest against demonetisation.

Army also produced documents to prove that the State government and police were informed of the exercise and their objection about a particular location was answered:


So the West Bengal government and police were intimated and kept in loop about the routine exercise by the Army. If there indeed was some covert operation planned by the union government to overthrow the state government using the army – which is a ridiculous charge as the union government has the constitutional power to do the same under Article 356 – why would the army inform the state government in advance?

If there was some miscommunication between the state police and the army due to change in dates, is this the right way to express unhappiness over the miscommunication? Is it fair to claim an ‘attack on democracy’ and “Emergency” and dragging the Indian Army?

So it is not really clear what made Mamata Banerjee lose her patience with the Army, so much that she accused them of misleading the people and attacking democracy.

But for Mamata Didi, it seems normal to claim grand conspiracies where everyone is trying to eliminate her.

Two years back, when there was a short-circuit in her hotel room in Malda, she claimed it as a conspiracy to kill her. And who can forget the incident in 2012, when she declared college students as CPM cadre and Maoists because they were putting questions about law and order and safety of women:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx-2SsI4B9U]

Soon she took it up a notch when in an interview to the Washington Post, she claimed that Marxists and Maoists were planning to kill her in a plot financed by North Korea, Venezuela, Hungary and the ISI.

So her conspiracy theories are not new, only that the target has changed. Earlier it were the Maoists, CPM, North Korea, etc. and now it is Narendra Modi.

LOL! When media thought one of Rahul Gandhi’s real tweets was from a hacker

Hemant Bijapurkar
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LOL! When media thought one of Rahul Gandhi’s real tweets was from a hacker

Rahul Gandhi, whose Twitter account got hacked yesterday and resulted in a wide variety of abusive and amusing tweets emanating from his handle, was in for another surprise after one of his real tweets was mistaken to be a hacked one by some media houses.

Hours after the hacked tweets of Rahul Gandhi were deleted and normalcy seemed to return (changed name and bio of the Twitter account restored to the original one late last night itself), the following tweet was posted from the Congress Vice President’s account today morning:


Metaphorically speaking, from all the swamp and mud of the obscene tweets, a beautiful lotus had emerged.

Soon it bloomed and last we checked about 7 hours later, it had received over 2550 retweets and 4085 favorites and was even retweeted by some Congress handles, thus it was the real deal.

But looks like the ever cynical media thought that Rahul Gandhi wasn’t capable of such a magnanimous gesture of embracing all his haters and showering them love. They proceeded to declare his magnanimously profound tweet as another hacked one.

Here are some of the media houses who thought it was another tweet by the hacker:



So we have four prominent media houses or 400 lit fests right there, who think Rahul Gandhi is not capable of coming up with that beautiful prose and benevolent gesture. Mahatma Gandhi used to embrace his haters, why is Rahul Gandhi not capable of doing that? He is a Gandhi too, isn’t he?

Rahul even called his haters beautiful, who apparently can’t see their beauty yet. So we ask the media houses who thought this was a hacked tweet, did they think that the hacker was calling all Congress supporters beautiful but full of hatred? Congress party will not like it!

If Congress needs to under cyber security better, Media needs to know the character of all of celebrity Tweeters better after this incident. They shouldn’t go by stereotypes that makes Rahul Gandhi a simpleton who can’t make profound statements. Someday Arvind Kejriwal’s account might get hacked and they will think everything is alright.

Also, what were they thinking when they thought that the hacker, who had been posting abusive messages, had suddenly became philosophical? Did they think the hacker to be a split personality who switches between Raghu Ram from Roadies to Alok Nath in a movie doing kanyadaan?

Nonetheless, even after over 7 hours, the media houses haven’t realized their mistake and have kept their tweets intact. Though if you find any of the above tweets deleted or unavailable, do let us know in the comment box or on our Twitter or Facebook pages. One of our staff has all the screenshots 😉

Finance Ministry’s poorly drafted clarification, aided by media spin, leads to rumours of “surgical strike” on Gold

Gaurav
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Finance Ministry’s poorly drafted clarification, aided by media spin, leads to rumours of “surgical strike” on Gold

BJP and by extension the Indian Government has earned a reputation of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on umpteen occasions all thanks to its woeful communication. And today, in the midst of demonetisation, it has done it once again. Worse, this is not a victory yet, and is already being converted into a defeat.

Ever since the scheme of scrapping old notes was announced, social media was rife with all sorts of rumours. We at OpIndia.com had to conduct multiple “surgical strikes” on these rumours to kill any chance of a flare-up. One such rumour was the purported move of the Government to soon target gold held by households, after it went after cash. There were various variations of this rumour but the in short, all tried to create panic among the average citizen about his or her gold.

So the Government of India, through its Ministry of Finance, tried to lay to rest one such rumour, but managed to start an even worse rumour. ANI News, tweeted out the following information, which was soon latched on to by many media houses:

The news
The news

The most problematic part of the above was the last tweet, which reported the restrictions on the amount of Gold which would not be seized. Soon we had news items like the below:


So was this the truth? Obviously not. Most media reports missed out on stating that these limits for seizure were applicable ONLY in case of Income Tax raids. This was itself clear in the Finance Ministry’s press release, based on which the media had reported the above. But was this a new rule which the Ministry had announced? Not really. These limits were in fact from an instruction which dated back to 1994. And there in lies the entire problem.

The Finance Ministry was only trying to quell rumours that there was no new provision regarding chargeability of tax on jewellery in the Taxation Laws (Second Amendment) Bill, 2016 passed this week in the Lok Sabha. The clarification went on to reiterate the changes proposed which are already well know. Till here it was all hunky dory.

After this, the clarification went on to reiterate existing laws and rules relating to Gold and from here it went downhill. Unnecessarily, this old law which is relevant only in case of Income Tax raids, was mentioned. The clarification did mention that it was applicable only in case of raids, but there was absolutely no need to mention this in a press release going out to the entire country.

Income Tax Raids are generally a very rare phenomenon and definitely do not concern 99.99% of the population. Worse, it revealed that rules made with the sensibilities of 1994 in mind, were being applied in 2016.

Once the Government had opened the gates, the media entered and made a hash of the entire clarification and reported a completely different picture. Self Goal: Scorer media, assisted and created by Finance Ministry.

Update: The Finance Ministry has released another communication which now clearly states that “there is no limit on holding of gold jewellery or ornaments by anybody provided it is acquired from explained sources of income including inheritance” and that the limits pertain to only cases of Income Tax raids.

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