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Poster boys of Congress: some awesome posters created by Allahabad party workers

OpIndia Staff
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Poster boys of Congress: some awesome posters created by Allahabad party workers

Indian politics is quite colourful with banners and posters being the brushes that bring the colour to the political canvas. Poster wars between political parties are as crucial and advertisement wars between commercial brands. Haseeb Ahmad and Shreesh Chandra Dubey are two such warriors for Congress.

Both of them are party workers from Allahabad, who earlier held posts in the organization. They have made news more than once with their creative posters, and we bring to you their story and some of their awesome posters.

They attracted eyeballs and attentions ahead of the 2014 general elections when they thought Priyanka Gandhi would be a better candidate to lead the party. They came up with a poster that almost trolled Congress’ official slogan “Main Nahin, Hum” that was created to project Rahul Gandhi as mass leader:

Congress election poster
The poster hinted that UPA-3 was difficult under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi.

Things became a bit too hot to handle for Congress when they came up with another poster in support of Priyanka Gandhi, this time commenting on Sonia Gandhi’s health:

Congress election poster
The poster that was not at all liked by the Congress high command.

Since even the media doesn’t comment on Sonia Gandhi’s health, both of these were suspended from Congress party for the above poster. But this didn’t deter them and they continued with their posters in support of Priyanka:

Congress election poster
The duo hinted that they were not sycophants like Digvijay Singh, who gave dishonest feedback.

With Congress losing the general elections, the duo continued hammering their demand and suggestion that Priyanka should now lead the party at least in Uttar Pradesh. Their past sin was forgiven in the meantime and they were inducted back in the party:

Congress election poster
Haseeb and Shreesh appear to be fan of Bollywood too. Agnipath.

With Amit Shah’s strategy credited for BJP’s spectacular win in Uttar Pradesh during the general elections, the duo claimed that only way to checkmate Shah’s strategy was… of course, Priyanka Gandhi leading the party:

Congress election poster
Both of them know who is the real threat to the party.

But with the party or Priyanka in no mood to heed to their demands, the duo appeared to have given up. They finally came up with a poster that praised Rahul Gandhi too, but Priyanka was there on the poster as well:

Congress election poster
Rahul Gandhi comes back on posters, and without being trolled.

However, their faith in Rahul Gandhi was short-lived as Congress lost another round of state assembly elections early this year. Both of them came up with posters that trolled Rahul Gandhi for the defeat:

Congress posters
The set of posters released after 2016 assembly elections defeat. Rahul Gandhi was again targeted and chorus for Priyanka was back.

Both were stripped off their posts for trolling Rahul Gandhi. They went back to their demand of getting Priyanka Gandhi to lead the party. However, this time they didn’t troll Rahul Gandhi:

Congress election poster
Both of them were back and declared that Indira was back.

With their demands of Priyanka at helm not looking to be met anytime soon again, both of them finally decided to praise Rahul Gandhi as disciplined Congress workers. They declared Rahul Gandhi a “yugpurush” and an avatar of Arjun (we don’t think they were trolling Rahul Gandhi):

Congress election poster
Sudden love and respect for Rahul Gandhi and his abilities was seen.

Their new found love and respect for Rahul Gandhi was seen again, when they used the “surgical strikes” moment to paint Rahul Gandhi as Brahmin superhero (Pandit Rahul Gandhi) all ready to take on Amit Shah. Looks like they are no longer dependent on Priyanka Gandhi to take on Shah:

Congress election poster
While Congress central leadership was clueless how to counter ‘surgical strikes’ fame of BJP, the duo found a way.

And in the latest poster, this love for Gandhi family has gone a step further. Now even Varun Gandhi of BJP finds a place in the poster:

Congress election poster
Sign of this to come? After all the duo were right about Rahul Gandhi’s inability to form UPA-3 government.

These posters don’t constitute the entire portfolio of Haseeb Ahmad and Shreesh Chandra Dubey, and we at OpIndia.com seriously suggest that they should host a website where they showcase all their posters.

Let’s see what their next poster will have. Will Priyanka be back?

Devendra Fadnavis: Party or Broker? Decoding Maha CM’s move in ADHM ‘deal’

Amit Kelkar
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Devendra Fadnavis: Party or Broker? Decoding Maha CM’s move in ADHM ‘deal’

Social media, newspaper op-eds and TV debates are abuzz with the ‘intervention’ of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in resolving the dispute between Karan Johar and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in relation to the release of the move Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM).

MNS had threatened the owners of multiplexes that if they exhibited ADHM, they may face disruption and forcible blocking of the movie because it has Pakistani actors. Other than MNS, some single screen owners themselves had decided to boycott the release in wake of anti-Pakistan feelings running high in the country after Uri attack.

With the opposition growing, Bollywood talking heads quickly conflated boycott with ban, misrepresenting the boycott as government intervention, and immediately took the battle to the only destination they recognize lately – PM Modi’s doorstep.

The matter went through familiar twists and turns adequately documented in “The Intolerance Playbook in Modi’s India” which was written before the Bihar election in November 2015. Given that Maharashtra was at the frontline of this controversy, CM Fadnavis had to act in some way to bring the issue to a logical closure. Last week, Fadnavis met the MNS chief Raj Thackrey and Karan Johar to put an end to this controversy.

After this meeting, MNS ‘cleared’ the movie release with three key demands accepted by Johar – no future association of Pakistani artists, a tribute to the soldiers before the movie plays, and a donation of Rupees 5 crore towards Army welfare by every producer who has cast Pakistani artists in any movie yet to be released.

The Maharashtra CM came in for heavy criticism for “brokering” such a settlement, though he claims he had opposed the MNS demand of donation of 5 cr, which was quickly agreed upon by the producers.

His intervention has been dubbed as a poor precedent, breakdown of good governance, and a blot on the position of a Chief Minister.

While all this is debated and more, the most important reason for Fadnavis’ intervention is being missed out on. His actions – whether or not befitting a Chief Minister – were completely political, and he has managed to strengthen his party ship in a big way after this ‘settlement’.

How? The answer lies in the Maharashtra state assembly election of 2014. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has about 42% of the seats in the assembly. It is supported by Shiv Sena (SS), which is still smarting from the loss of designation as the leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Maharashtra. The other option for the BJP is to take outside support from Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to keep the government stable. But BJP, and specifically Fadnavis, vociferously campaigned against NCP in 2014 on the way to power. So that’s an avoidable option. Therefore BJP would like to keep SS, but also have the upper hand.

BJP however cannot have the administrative upper hand, because it does not control any large municipal body in Maharashtra outside Nagpur. All these corporations are with SS, NCP, and Congress or in one case, MNS.

Retaining these municipal bodies is critical for each of those four parties – after all politics needs money and money is derived from power. All the moves with respect to AHDM were actually staged by every party not so much in an ideological way, but to position themselves ahead of the local body elections.

The new round of local body elections start November end and will culminate with the larger corporations Mumbai (BMC), Thane (TMC), Pune (PMC) and Pimpri-Chinchwad (PCMC) going to polls in February.

Ideally, Fadnavis would want to control BMC with the support of SS and PMC independently. He would also want to be a clear second in TMC (likely to be retained by SS) and PCMC (likely to be retained by NCP). This game of thrones needs a certain style of voting division. That’s where MNS comes into play – its voter base has significant overlap with that of SS and in some cases the BJP itself.

Fadnavis’ intervention has given a new lease of life to MNS in Maharashtra, and it may ride the ‘victory against Johar’ wave to cut some votes in these elections specifically in Greater Mumbai and Pune Metro regions.

This political action gains more prominence because for the initial rounds of polls for smaller local bodies, SS has decided to contest independently of the BJP. This announcement was made by the SS Chief Uddhav Thackrey just a few days ago.

BJP has a reasonably strong urban vote base in Maharashtra but it is not a strong party in semi-urban and rural areas. With that handicap, it is quite likely that the party does not fare too well in these smaller local bodies, which tend to be dominated by local strongmen, often aligned with either SS or NCP.

So it became doubly critical for Fadnavis to control the 4 February elections. The only way he could convince SS to have an alliance would have been to show them that BJP had a credible alternative (an MNS alliance) or could prop up a bogey (MNS contesting all seats against SS).

The meeting with Raj Thackrey and Karan Johan achieved that amply. Irrespective of the optics of the settlement conditions, ADHM will now release sans violence. SS will have to find another way to put pressure on the BJP to let them be the senior partner in February polls. And Fadnavis will go into these negotiations from a position of strength.

Was the CM intervention bad optics? Was this bad governance? A CM exceeding his brief? Debates will continue to take place and most people, including many vocal BJP supporters on the social media, believe that Fadnavis erred.

But Fadnavis appears to be betting on the fact that the voters don’t take editorial commentaries too seriously and may well see the compromise as a ‘reasonable one’. He may have lost the morality perception of social media influencers, but gained in a huge way in his political standing. In his equations with SS, it is Advantage Fadnavis for now.

Some Twitter celebrities asked if Fadnavis was the party or the broker to the MNS – Johar settlement. He was neither. Instead he made a move to be the Baazigar – kuchh haar ke jeetne wale ko… Voters will complete the dialog one way or the other in February 2017.

3 retweets by Kejriwal within a day that made a fool out of himself

OpIndia Staff
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3 retweets by Kejriwal within a day that made a fool out of himself

Arvind Kejriwal is known to be an active Twitter user, like all his supporters are. He often makes news through his tweets and uses it as an important tool for his political campaigning. Only yesterday he made news when he got into a Twitter fight with Congress leader Captain Amarinder Singh as part of Punjab assembly elections campaign.

Popular opinion was that Captain won the Twitter fight. Thought that may not change the ground reality where AAP is expected to throw a tough challenge to both Badal and Captain, this “defeat” surely got the AAP supremo a little upset; this reflected in his choice of retweets that virtually boomeranged on himself.

To divert attention from this Twitter defeat, Kejriwal re-tweeted some other messages attacking the union government and Prime Minister Modi. However, those retweets ended up pointing fingers at Kejriwal himself.

The first of these retweets, while he was in the middle of fight with Captain, was a retweet of an AAP-leaning humour-parody account titled “History of India”. It attacked Modi for not acting against UPA corruption after coming to power.

Arvind Kejriwal retweets
Assumption is that public won’t question Arvind Kejriwal ever?

Discounting the fact that most of the corruption cases are sub-judice and the government can’t be expected to influence judiciary (and when government went after cases like National Herald or corruption in Delhi secretariat that went back to Sheila Dixit regime, Arvind Kejriwal too had joined chorus of political vendetta), the irony was lost on Kejriwal himself who claimed to have 370 pages proof against Sheila Dixit.

Perhaps he was sure that the humour-parody account won’t point out this irony, so he re-tweeted happily.

The second of these ironical retweets came up after he gave up on Twitter fight with Captain. It was a retweet of news blog Janta Ka Reporter, better acknowledged as a mouthpiece of Aam Aadmi Party. It questioned why media didn’t discuss snoopgate, which was related to “private life” of Narendra Modi.

Kejriwal retweets
No one in media discusses private life of Arvind Kejriwal. And is it about private lives of Varun and Sandeep, or misuse of public posts?

Perhaps Kejriwal forgot that media did discuss snoopgate, and it was even an election issue before the 2014 general elections. However, this tweet exposes the irony that “Aaloogate” was never discussed by any media. In case you’re wondering, Aaloogate refers to claims of a journalist and former aide of Arvind Kejriwal, who accused him of having extra-marital affairs with a girl 16 years younger to him.

All leading media organisations and journalists have kept mum on this, and now Kejriwal wonders why private life of Narendra Modi is not discussed.

And the final retweet, completing hat-trick of irony, came up when Kejriwal re-tweeted Congress leader Salman Khurshid claiming rising intolerance in the country while citing examples of isolated and fabricated incidents.

Kejriwal retweets
Achchhe din for sure as Mr. Khurshid, who had dared Kejriwal to visit his constituency and go back safely, is now being retweeted by Kejriwal.

This retweet came within a day after Arvind Kejriwal had asked Captain Amarinder Singh as to why BJP folks were supporting the Congress leader in the twitter fight. It is true that many BJP supporters were indeed supporting Captain by re-tweeting his tweets.

But by his own logic, why is he now re-tweeting a Congress leader? Sab mile huye hain ji?

Troll CM Kejriwal finally meets his match on Twitter, runs away from Debate challenge

OpIndia Staff
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Troll CM Kejriwal finally meets his match on Twitter, runs away from Debate challenge

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal officially does not have any portfolio allotted to him, although he is the Chief Minister of Delhi. The common joke was that he had been handed the Twitter ministry, on which his job was trolling opponents. Earlier this year we saw how Kejriwal had tried to troll Modi, but social media trolled him instead. Kejriwal tries to troll many political leaders, but rarely do they pay any attention to him. But this time it was different.

It all started with Capt Amrinder Singh of the Congress, tweeting this:


To this, Troll CM Kejriwal had this reply:


Most politicians back-off at this stage, since the adage goes that wrestling with a pig will make you dirty, and the pig happy. But Captain was in the mood for a “dangal”. He promptly questioned Kejriwal on his tall claims of jailing many people if he came to power:


A severely embarrassed Kejriwal sidestepped this question altogether, but he had to have the last word, hence diverted the topic to something else:


But Captain was not about to give up:


And with this next tweet, he challenged Kejriwal for an open debate:


And Kejriwal accepted the challenge! But with conditions!! He didn’t accept the debate challenge for himself, but on behalf of four of his party members. He claimed that any of the four would come to debate with Captain!


And that was the full toss Captain was waiting for:


No sooner did this happen, Twitter exploded and exposed Kejriwal’s dual standards. In his pre-CM days, Kejriwal would keep challenging opponents to debates and claim victory when they refused to come:


Finally Kejriwal replied, but by that time the damage was done:


Even after this tweet, people reminded him of his multiple logical fallacies:


And even as this was unravelling, the Indian Express came to Kejriwal’s rescue to spin the episode as “Kejriwal accepts challenge”:


(Tweets updated till time of posting)

Update: Captain has hit back:


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Man goes to Madarsa to understand Muslim viewpoint, is accused of interference

OpIndia Staff
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Man goes to Madarsa to understand Muslim viewpoint, is accused of interference

Dehradun based Alok Bhatt decided to take an extra step and learn about common Indian Muslim’s views on issues like triple talaq and Uniform Civil Code (UCC), but little did he know that he will find himself in middle of a controversy and unknown calls following this rather admirable effort.

Alok, who is an active Twitter user, visited a local Madarsa on Saturday and talked to a few children studying there and other men accompanying those children or managing affairs of the Madarsa. Later, he shared his experience in shape of a series of tweets.

In his tweets, Alok praised the hafiz (caretaker) of Madarsa for being welcoming and talked to a few students about their studies, career plans, etc. Later he talked to a couple of men about their views on ongoing debate over triple talaq and UCC.

One of the men, Alok spoke to, opened up and told him about his sister who was divorced by her husband and she was left to fend for herself. He accepted that it was unfair on his sister, but claimed that triple talaq was part of the Holy Quran, as was told to him by a Maulavi the previous day.

Alok was given some pamphlets, which were distributed in the Madarsa for the women in local community to fill up. Muslim women were supposed to sign these pamphlets and declare that they were “fully satisfied” with rulings of Islamic Shariah, particularly about marriage, inheritance, and divorce, and that they “fully support” the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (which has vowed to retain the triple talaq practice).

Pamphlet to support personal laws
A sample pamphlet that Alok saw in the Madarsa (a higher resolution variant can be seen by clicking here).

It should be noted that the Law Commission has asked people to send their views on UCC and other related issues, and it appears that Madarsas are being used to create this public “support” in sync with views of the AIMPLB. This “wave of support” will later be conveyed to the Law Commission, declaring that Muslim women in India are happy with the status quo.

But are they really happy? When Alok probed the man further and asked for his views on triple talaq given what his sister had to undergo, the man got emotional, and said – what can we do? we are poor – and went inside.

Alok later shared his experience on Twitter and made a case about importance of understanding Indian Muslims by having a dialogue with them as a commoner – a conclusion anyone can hardly disagree with.

However, phone calls started coming in the following day after his series of tweets were shared by many. People claiming to speak on behalf of Muslim organizations told him that he shouldn’t have visited the Madarsa and talked about issues like talaq to young children (even though he talked to them only about studies).

There was a call that virtually accused him of trying to “interfere” in religious matters and of “misinterpreting” Islam. Perhaps this accusation flew from the fact that Alok had asked one Maulavi about proof of triple talaq being present in Quran – an argument many Muslim scholars too have made (that triple talaq is nowhere mentioned in the Quran).

These phone calls didn’t stop and Alok found himself in the middle of a controversy that he never intended to trigger. His tweets had suddenly become “controversial”. He even tweeted “I will NOT delete the tweets” last night, but found the pressure from certain quarters a bit too much.

“My entire intention was to reach out, but I was being accused of interfering,” Alok said when OpIndia.com got in touch with him, “As tone of calls changed, I realized that perhaps it is better that I don’t talk about this. I don’t want to get into some legal trouble, being accused of blasphemy or creating enmities between communities when my intentions were just the opposite. What better proof of my clear intention than the fact that I left my telephone number with the Madarsa teacher?”

As a result, on Monday morning, Alok deactivated his Twitter account.

He still can’t believe that he had to face this after such an honest dialogue without any ill will or bias.

“It was so poignant, humbling, and yet so troubling experience when I heard the story of someone’s sister,” Alok told OpIndia.com on phone, “But I didn’t know that I will have to face calls from unknown people asking me to explain my visit and intentions.”

Alok told OpIndia.com that he will wait for the “controversy” to die down and then will decide whether to be back on Twitter.

And while Alok decides not to tweet or say anything on the matter, those pamphlets are being signed by Muslim women, who perhaps don’t even know what they are signing on, telling the Law Commission that they don’t need any change.

For someone bullied for his art, Karan Johar is not doing justice to this YouTuber

OpIndia Staff
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For someone bullied for his art, Karan Johar is not doing justice to this YouTuber

Karan Johar can lay claim for being one of the most harassed movie makers in India, for having his Freedom of Expression throttled at multiple stages. His movies like My Name Is Khan, Wake Up Sid and most recently Ae Dil Hai Mushkil faced troubles from goons for various reasons. Even when he was involved in the AIB Roast, various issues were raised for his insensitive jokes. Given this, you would think Johar would probably empathise with artistes who get bullied into submission under various garbs. But think again.

Meet Jaby Koay. He is based out of California in the United States of America, and is a filmmaker who reacts to movies and trailers and shoots some of his own work. He also does trailer-reactions to Indian movies by the dozens and has a substantial fan following, earning him requests from Indians to do more Indian movies. And this is probably because he does a good job, and is not the usual condescending American.

Recently, Koay had been getting fan requests to do the trailer of ‘Dear Zindagi”, the upcoming movie starring Shahrukh Khan and Alia Bhatt. But he just wouldn’t do a trailer reaction for the movie. This obviously had his fans a bit bothered and hence, Jaby decided to make a fresh video, explaining why he didn’t do Dear Zindagi:

Jaby explains that few months back, when he did the trailer reaction to Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM), he got his first “copyright strike” from the team of ADHM. He explains that a “copyright claim” is where companies say someone is using their material hence they will demand a piece of his revenues. On the other hand, a “copyright strike” is much more serious and when a youtuber gets three such strikes, his channel gets shut down. And from here on he explains that ever since he got that notice, he is scared, and hence has avoided any movie which has any remote connection with Dharma Productions, and which is why he will not touch Dear Zindagi, which is also co-produced by Dharma Productions. He even tweeted about this when he got the notice, asking for help:


So here is an American youtuber, who does hundreds of movie trailer reviews across the world, and he manages to get threatened into avoiding all of Karan Johar’s movies, because a source of income for him is at stake. Why? just because he used ADHM’s movie trailer.

In his video he expresses his surprise and bewilderment as to what he did to deserve this notice. Hence he asks his fans to politely ask Dharma Productions, to allow him to do Dear Zindagi’s trailer reaction. His reaction is pretty understandable since he has done this for hundreds of movies, yet he gets a notice only for ADHM!

While Jaby was clueless, some Ajay Devgn fans were prompt to suggest that this had something to with Jaby’s positive reaction to Shivaay’s trailer. So is this what a victim of “censorship” Karan Johar does to other artistes? We hope Dharma Productions don’t sue us for using their movie’s poster!

Bihar students blast media for focusing only on caste in school beating case

OpIndia Staff
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Bihar students blast media for focusing only on caste in school beating case

MUZAFFARPUR: A few days back a video of some students of Kendriya Vidyalaya Gannipur mercilessly beating up a fellow student had gone viral. NDTV carried an article by the victim student where he claimed that he was beaten up as he was a Dalit and because he was getting good grades.

The incident made national news with Union HRD Minister Prakash Javdekar taking cognizance of the situation and promising action against those responsible and helping the victim. As a result, around twenty teachers of that school were transferred and the principal was suspended by Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (managing body of the chain of schools).

The school saw visits by many politicians including senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, who claimed that Dalits were not safe in Bihar. Local administration too swung into action and a case under the SC/ST act was filed, making arrest of the principal a possibility.

Now these developments have sent other students and their parents into state of panic. With exams around the corner, they fear that the mass transfer of teachers and suspension of the principal could adversely affect their future. Already classes have been suspended in the school ever since the case got nationwide attention.

Some students have now come out in support of the principal and are blaming politicians and media for the current situation. A video showing some angry girls from the school has gone viral where these girls can be heard condemning the violence against the student, but finding it troublesome that only caste was made the focus by the media and then by the politicians.

One girl in the beginning of the video claims that she herself is a Dalit but didn’t face any discrimination in the school, while another girl, angrily, asks media to stop focusing entirely on caste:

Those accused of beating up the student have been arrested and sent to remand homes as they were juveniles. Reports suggest that these juvenile offenders had a history of indulging in such violence in the school. Even their father is an accused in a murder case and currently lodged in jail.

This surely puts the school administration in question as to why these guys were not taken to task earlier if they had a history of such acts. Did the teachers fear retribution or were they being irresponsible? However, it also suggests that caste could not be the only reason for the criminal behavior by these goons.

Nonetheless, the case exposes many flaws in our education system – how schools are not safe from bullies, how outsider and political intervention can upset normal functioning of schools, and how media and politicians should be extra careful when dealing with issues that can impact young lives.

The curious case of Barkha Dutt and Shekhar Gupta’s joint venture

OpIndia Staff
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The curious case of Barkha Dutt and Shekhar Gupta’s joint venture

In the beginning of this year, senior journalist Shekhar Gupta of the coup story fame and controversial journalist Barkha Dutt of Radia tapes fame announced launch of The Print – a news media startup. They tweeted almost the same thing while making the announcement:



There was much excitement – mostly from Mr. Gupta and Ms. Dutt themselves and their fans – about this new venture that was another in a series of news media startups that followed ventures like leftist propaganda blog Scroll, its not-for-profit clone The Wire, AAP mouthpiece Janta Ka Reporter, and Patrika group’s Catch News that was led by Shoma Chaudhary of Tarun Tejpal fame.

In individual capacities, both Mr. Gupta and Ms. Dutt had taken interesting professional decisions before this announcement was made public. Mr. Gupta had “restructured” his relationship with India Today group, which he had joined after quitting The Indian Express, in a way that allowed him to form his own venture, while Barkha Dutt had done the same with respect to NDTV.

With their announcements coming on heels of such career decisions, it was assumed that The Print was their joint-venture. However, company records told a different story. Shekhar Gupta had formed a company called Mediascape where Barkha Dutt was not publicly listed as a director even six months after the announcement, while Shekhar Gupta was not listed as a director in a company formed by Barkha Dutt.

OpIndia.com checked the public records of all the companies where either Shekhar Gupta or Barkha Dutt were listed as directors, and found that none of these companies had both of them listed together as directors. The only place where both of them were listed together as co-founders was the bio or tweets of Twitter account of The Print.

However, the bio of The Print on Twitter was changed in July this year, and Barkha Dutt’s name was removed as co-founder.

This happened at a time when Barkha Dutt was involved in yet another controversy where Pakistan based terrorist Hafiz Sayeed had praised her for “doing good work in Kashmir”. She was also involved in a war of words with Arnab Goswami at the same time, lobbying with fellow journalists to attack Arnab.

People online wondered if this was the reason Barkha Dutt’s name was removed. Was Shekhar Gupta trying to disassociate himself from Barkha Dutt after she was praised by a terrorist?

Once such questions were asked by many on the social media, Barkha Dutt’s name was added back as co-founder within a day by The Print:


As always, these two media personalities, who love to ask questions to others, chose to ignore the questions about why Barkha Dutt’s name was removed in first place.

Now around 10 weeks later, Barkha Dutt’s name has gone missing from The Print’s bio on Twitter again. We noticed it after The Print actively started promoting its flagship event Off The Cuff with industrialist Mukesh Ambani.

In the invite for the Off The Cuff event with Mukesh Ambani, Barkha’s name as a co-host was missing, though her company “Barkha Dutt Live Media” was mentioned as being in alliance along with 5 other brands.

Not only Barkha Dutt’s name was missing, but Barkha herself was missing from the event, as confirmed by herself:


Also notable is the fact that while The Print and Shekhar Gupta have been advertising the interview with Mukesh Ambani almost non-stop on Twitter, Barkha Dutt hasn’t sent out a single tweet, except the one above, about it, let alone advertising it (at the time of writing this report, which is five days after the event got over).

Maybe because Mukesh Ambani said he likes to watch Arnab Goswami at prime time?

Or maybe because Shekhar Gupta and Barkha Dutt have parted ways and are no longer partners in The Print? If so, what caused this rift? Did Barkha leave voluntarily or was she asked to leave due to continuous controversies surrounding her?

We got in touch with The Print both on Twitter as well as through email on Tuesday and waited for their response for 4 days. We sent reminders too, but we received no response. We will update this report if we receive a response.

In absence of any response, we conclude three things:

  1. For some reason, The Print doesn’t want to disclose who owns the brand legally.
  2. Removal of Barkha Dutt’s name as co-founder, twice since inception, indicates that something is not working between Shekhar Gupta and Barkha Dutt.
  3. Our celebrity journalists love to ask questions, but hate to answer them.

Varun Gandhi’s alleged Honey-trap, Karma and the UP elections

OpIndia Staff
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Varun Gandhi’s alleged Honey-trap, Karma and the UP elections

The year is 1978. Jagjivan Ram, the then Defence Minister in the Janata Party government, was a powerful opponent of Indira Gandhi, whose party had just lost the elections. It was said that Ram even had a chance of becoming the first ever Dalit Prime Minister.

On the other side we had Maneka Gandhi, daughter-in-law of Indira, and the editor of a magazine named “Surya”. In a case of political vendetta, explicit pictures of Jagjivan Ram’s son Suresh Ram, in a compromising position with a 21-year-old Delhi University student, were splashed across the centrespread of the magazine.

Cut to the present, Maneka Gandhi must be praying to the heavens hoping that there is no Surya Magazine in present times.

Maneka’s son Varun Gandhi is at the centre of a controversy over allegations that he had leaked defence secrets to controversial arms dealer Abhishek Verma. It has been alleged that Verma “blackmailed” Gandhi, who was a member of the defence consultative committee, into sharing sensitive information on crucial military deals.

US-based C Edmonds Allen, an international arms dealer and lawyer, whose earlier complaints had led to investigation of arms dealer Abhishek Verma, has written to the PMO that Varun Gandhi has been “honey trapped and compromised” by Verma. Allen’s letter is said to be accompanied by a compact disc containing hundreds of intimate photos of Gandhi, collected since 2002.

Varun on his part has squarely denied the claims, for lack of any evidence, and has threatened a law-suit for defamation. He claims to have met Abhishek Verma only during his post-graduation days in 2002, and not after that.

Through a public letter to citizens, Varun has further claimed that he “never attended a single meeting of the Defence Consultative Committee” and thus he neither sought nor possessed any information or knowledge of any sensitive information. He also denies meeting Allen ever, and claims that the letter could be a publicity stunt by Allen. He doesn’t mention the pictures or the issue of being honey-trapped in the letter, but calls the claim of him being blackmailed as ludicrous.

As far as the pictures are concerned, they are indeed highly explicit, and we can’t publish them. Allen has claimed that these pictures were authentic and not digitally or otherwise tampered. They do appear authentic, but this should be left to forensic experts, which is why we are not publishing them.

However, we can talk about it for sure. In the pictures accessed by OpIndia.com, Varun Gandhi looks inebriated, to say the least, and in compromising position with a female. In some pictures, his eyes even seem closed. This is crucial since the pictures seem to have been clicked by a third person, using a high resolution camera. Remember, these pictures are from more than 10 years ago, when selfies weren’t a thing nor were sex-tapes to be released online.

So from the photos, some questions arise: Was Gandhi heavily under the influence of some drugs or intoxicants? Does this explain why his eyes seem closed? Does this also explain why he “allowed” a third person to click pictures of him in compromising positions? Was he indeed a victim of blackmailing but chose not to go to police about it?

Whatever the case maybe, Varun is in a soup. What makes matters worse for him is that even BJP has instructed its spokespersons not to defend him. They have either kept mum or have said they wouldn’t like to compromise with national security.

With the Uttar Pradesh elections coming up, this episode can act as a blessing in disguise for BJP. Varun Gandhi has been pushing the BJP to annoint him as the CM candidate of UP. Just a few days before BJP’s national executive meeting in Allahabad in June this year, massive hoardings came up urging BJP to press for Varun as the CM candidate. The posters had Varun’s face juxtaposed with those of Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.

Varun’s mother Maneka Gandhi too has been engaged in some war-fare with BJP. In a move to back her son for UP CM’s post, Maneka tried is alleged to have moved some pawns to defame Smriti Irani, the other contender in the UP CM race. Coupled with the fact that Maneka tried to team up with an abusive journalist known to do hit-jobs on RSS and BJP, she and her son were losing popular support among core BJP supporters.

How will BJP play this episode is yet to be seen. Will they play the silent game and let things move as per the media narrative? Or will they go for the jugular and severe ties with the other Gandhi parivar? Will we see a situation where a Gandhi searching for another political party, may end up joining a party, desperately searching another Gandhi?

Is someone at JNU planning Rohith Vemula part 2?

OpIndia Staff
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Is someone at JNU planning Rohith Vemula part 2?

Najeeb Ahmad, an MSc student at JNU reportedly got into a scuffle with some fellow students in his hostel room and went missing since October 15. JNUSU and his family members have since blamed ABVP for his “abduction”. JNUSU, continuing with its revolutionary ways, then proceeded to confine the Vice Chancellor of JNU to his admin block as part of their protests.

What everyone in the media and the left wanted to portray as a open and shut case of ABVP assaulting Najeeb Ahmad and the latter disappearing, has now been called out thanks to ex-JNU student and columnist Abhinav Prakash. The alternative narrative came to light when Abhinav Prakash visited the campus to find out more about the affair.

No involvement of ABVP in the Najeeb Ahmad episode

Abhinav’s findings show that ABVP was nowhere in the picture. It was Najeeb who first assaulted three fellow hostel mates, who were campaigning for the hostel election for the post of mess secretary. It is alleged that Najeeb got infuriated when he saw one of the students wearing ‘sacred thread’ and there was no provocation from the campaigning students.

The accusation that Najeeb slapped a student without provocation is corroborated by copies of the minutes of the meeting held between the warden and the students, on the night of the event:

Minutes of the meeting
Minutes of the meeting

The minutes clearly show that Najeeb accepted that he slapped the people who came to his room, without provocation. He made this confession in front of his room-mate Quasim and the hostel President Alimuddin, amongst others including the senior warden.

Two of those assaulted by Najeeb were Dalits, but the hostel warden, himself a Dalit, allegedly prevented the use of Prevention of Atrocities against SC/ST act against Najeeb. Najeeb was then asked to vacate his hostel room by the warden. Najeeb admitted his fault and agreed to leave the hostel within a week, and that should have been the end of the story.

There were also reports of Najeeb exhibiting strange behaviour and his roommate Quasim (one of the signatories in the above minutes of the meeting) even asking for a change of room as he feared Najeeb and his behaviour.

Irked by the warden’s stand and the fact that Najeeb had to accept his mistake, the left started putting pressure on hostel president Alimuddin to get the earlier resolution changed. When the president didn’t oblige, some of these students started whipping up communal sentiments by accusing Alimuddin of betraying the ‘Qaum’ (community).

Then Najeeb suddenly disappeared. And the incidents of that night were given a new twist. Students belonging to the left organisations started claiming that Najeeb was virtually “lynched by a mob” that night. Questions remain that if such a serious violence against Najeeb did happen, why did the minutes, signed by the President of JNUSU who belongs to one such organisation, not mention that? Was Najeeb taken so some hospital? Why was no FIR filed? These questions remain unanswered.

Despite circumstantial evidences not backing them, the new narrative was built by these left leaning student organisations, ably assisted by the mainstream media, where Najeeb was painted as a victim and the students who were slapped by him were painted as aggressors. News reports further suggested that Najeeb had been “abducted” by some people, pointing fingers at ABVP.

According to his mother, Najeeb had called her up at 2 AM following that night’s incidents to tell her about the fight he had, which prompted her to rush to JNU from Badaun in Uttar Pradesh. She also talked to him at 11 AM when she reached Anand Vihar in Delhi, and Najeeb confirmed that he was in his hostel room. Later he was not found there when his mother reached JNU at around 12.30 PM. He had left his mobile phone in his hostel room. If left is to be believed, a student was abducted in broad day light around noon.

Apart from the claim of abduction sounding preposterous, eye witnesses state that Najeeb had actually left campus the next day in an auto-rickshaw on his own. A CCTV footage of this incident would have proved or disproved this claim, just as minutes of the meeting prove what happened that night, but JNU has no CCTV cameras installed. When the administration proposed so, whole of JNU had protested against their installation as they didn’t want the ‘state’ monitoring their fiefdom.

Intimidation and threats

The chain of events doesn’t stop here. Now violent elements are threatening students of JNU who are going against the narrative. Ex-Joint Secretary of JNUSU and ABVP activist Saurabh Sharma who posted the copies of the minutes on Facebook to defend his organisation being dragged into the incident, is now getting death threats. A letter from Jahangirpuri sent by some ‘Sahid Khan’ says that “he will find and cut” Sharma into pieces and that “he will burn down the entire ABVP and the other students of JNU”.

Threats
Threats

Even the hostel president Alimuddin took to social media and complained of being harassed by some groups. The hostel where it all happened – Mahi-Mandavi hostel – is being branded a “Sanghi hostel” by the left student groups.

A larger game at play

So why did all this happen? Was Najeeb the sole person responsible for it? Apparently no.

It is feared that many parties to create a Rohith Vemula kind of a situation again, with Najeeb Ahmad as the scapegoat, with someone else pulling the strings. Whether Najeeb became a part of it voluntarily or involuntarily is not known yet.

But whatever may be the case, the controversy has again put JNU in news with a narrative that ‘our campuses are not safe’ blaming a particular ideology. This will continue to grow in days to come, before the truth comes out, if it ever does.

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