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Censor Board Member Ashoke Pandit, who is going to Censor you?

Gaurav
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Censor Board Member Ashoke Pandit, who is going to Censor you?

A lot has been said about the AIB Roast. There have been diverse opinions. Our editor @bhak_sala liked it but was uncomfortable about it. @Waatho felt it was mediocre. And a Hindu group and a Christian group felt that it “misleading today’s youth” and “was against Christ” respectively. But the weirdest reaction came from Mr Ashoke Pandit, who said it was a “Porn Show”

I have seen most the AIB knockout, I couldn’t sit through it because I felt the jokes become repetitive, and I did not see any Pornography in it. Pornography is sexual matter, shown for sexual arousal. I wonder if Mr Ashoke Pandit gets “sexually aroused” by filthy language and crude jokes, but that’s his personal choice.

Next, he said it was a “stage play”.

I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination, a roast can be called a “stage play”, but I will construe that he meant to ask whether AIB obtained the necessary permits. For this, he should probably speak to Culture Minister of Maharashtra Mr Vinod Tawde who has rightly begun a probe into this aspect, while promising he won’t get into “moral policing”.

Mr Pandit also made this rather amusing point, where he tried to allude that because an organization has a slang word in its name.

By this logic member of the Assamese community “Chutia” should never be given driving licenses. On a serious note, the matter of Police Permission will also be probably covered by the probe ordered by Mr Tawde.

And finally comes the pièce de résistance, a classic case of poor sentence construction, mixed with improper punctuation topped off with mind-numbing logic.

To give the benefit of doubt to Mr Pandit, he probably meant to use a comma after the word “sex” and before “to”. That would mean, Ashoke Pandit, was rather offended that Karan Johar showed his sexual preferences to his mother, in “public”. I wonder if an auditorium is “public” since the audience came to the show of their own volition. Some may argue that the video is on Youtube and hence it is “public”, which may seem the case if Section 294 of the IPC is taken literally, but I doubt any court in the country would call it “public” since the viewer has the right to not view it. Nothing is thrust on you. (Also I am pretty sure Section 294 or Section 66A of the IT Act can be used against Mr Pandit’s above tweet too)

Some will also say it is Mr Ashoke Pandit’s “Freedom of Expression” to criticize an event, and I fully agree with them. The only reason why I am worried is this gentleman is a member of our Censor Board. Will his personal views get translated into Censor board actions? Will any movie making use of cuss-words and some lewd actions be labelled a “Porn movie”? Will Censor board be reduced to the idiots who have filed cases against AIB trying to misuse Section 294 to continue their Moral Policing?

Morals are a very subjective and personal concept. What maybe moral to me may be immoral to someone else. The Censor board, in such a scenario, should take a balanced stance. We don’t need preachers or priests in the Censor board, to uphold whatever their idea of “Indian Culture” is, but we need artists, who can understand what another artist is trying to convey.  The board must respect the Freedom of Expression of an artist, and must allow it within the realms of the law. Wherever there is a law (like Section 294) which can be misused, the Censor board should take a progressive stance. We don’t need shackles, just guidelines. In the current context, We at OpIndia.com hope that the court does call up AIB and once and for all lays down some guidelines as to what can be said and what cannot be said in public. Till then, if you don’t like something being said, just don’t watch it!

AAP candidate Naresh Balyan named owner of 8000 liquor bottles. Will Vishal Dadlani answer?

OpIndia Staff
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AAP candidate Naresh Balyan named owner of 8000 liquor bottles. Will Vishal Dadlani answer?

On 31st January, Times of India first tweeted that the Election Commission had raided AAP candidate Naresh Balyan’s residence and seized more than 5000 Liquor bottles. Within two hours Times of India deleted that tweet and issued a correction that there was the bottles were not linked to Balyan. We had done a story at that time on this, explaining how even the EC had filed a case against “unknown persons” since there wasn’t enough proof to link the raid with any person.

At that time AAP leader Vishal Dadlani had made startling allegations that the godown was owned by a BJP supporter:

Another AAP leader Atishi Marlena claimed that the godown owner was a “Mukesh Balyan”

Today, Times of India has reported that after its investigation, Delhi Police have determined that the 8000 liquor bottles did belong the AAP candidate Naresh Balyan. We also tried to find out who this “Mukesh Balyan” is, but we could find no record of anyone with the name “Mukesh Balyan” in the Delhi Voter’s list. It is possible that Naresh Balyan had used a fake name to register the premises.

Now that the police have squarely blamed Naresh Balyan, Vishal Dadlani and gang will have to do either of the following:

1. Name this “BJP awardee” “BJP flunky” who as per them owned the godown.  Then provide proof of this, and exonerate their candidate

OR

2. Give an unconditional public apology for lying to the public at large. If he relied on some “sources” he should reveal the names of such sources.

Thanks morons for the FIR, now hope AIB is dragged to the court, but not to jail

Rahul Roushan
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Thanks morons for the FIR, now hope AIB is dragged to the court, but not to jail

A Hindi news channel called “India News” conducts a prime time debate on comedy group AIB’s show AIB Knockout and calls it “kalank” (disgrace). It invites representative of some obscure organization claiming to represent Brahmins, and other similar luminaries who declared that what AIB did was “criminal”.

It could be coincidence, but the next day there were FIRs against AIB and some Bollywood celebrities, accusing them of obscenity, immorality, and indecency – all are indeed “crimes” as per our laws, in case you were wondering.

Expectedly, people are calling this step an overreaction and assault of free speech – which they are – however, the morons who went to a police station to file an FIR over a YouTube video were merely exercising their constitutional right.

The constitution doesn’t bar anyone from using constitutional rights that are available to him by virtue of being a citizen of India, just because he is a moron. And if they are morons, it is of no use trying debating with them and convincing them.

So what is left?

Let the courts decide.

Yes, it may sound like a standard response from a politician, but perhaps it will help every one of us if this case is indeed taken to the courts.

USA, which is one of the most free-speech friendly nations in the world, too has struggled with such issues. AIB, in their video, have acknowledged that what they were trying to do something that originated in the USA.

Today, a show like AIB won’t get any comic jailed in the USA, because their courts have debated such issues for ages and now the legal system, as well as the society, has a fair idea about what constitutes obscenity and what not. The “Seven Dirty Words” is one of the prime examples of this.

Please understand that laws dealing with obscenity and immorality can never be objective. You can’t expect the law to be coded as objectively as “If a photograph shows 40% of breasts, it is okay, but if it goes above that, it will be considered obscene” or something like “One can say kamina, but you will be fined if you say chu**ya”.

In absence of such objective codification of laws, “precedents” help. And precedents would happen only if these things are taken to the courts. US, apart from the first amendment that lays foundation of the free speech, has many precedents that have helped the society to grow.

However, here in India, we love only to debate in the newspaper columns, TV shows, websites (like ours), and on social media. This might be good for intellectual masturbation (oh crap, hope no one files an FIR against us), but it doesn’t help in getting a “legal” clarity over this issue.

It might sound like we at OpIndia.com are indulging in schadenfreude and enjoying the trouble AIB seems to have got into, but we really wish that this case is dragged to the courts. Popular mood is in their favor.

And hope the judge awards punishment to the Hindu and Christian groups for wasting time of the court by filing those FIRs. Or, god forbid, the court awards punishment to the AIB guys for breaking the laws.

In either case, it will help the society grow and it will enrich the interpretation of law.

Please understand that today AIB is getting popular support, and this is the right time to settle the debate “legally”.

What happens if someone cracks similar jokes on his Facebook profile a few weeks later and a similar FIR is filed? That person may not get the popular support currently AIB is enjoying. Let that Facebook guy have the clarity today itself if he should crack a similar joke without being worried of going to jail. Let this case reach its “logical conclusion”.

The morons have done their job by filing an FIR, and we hope the court settles it – for once and for all. Let the government be not pressurized to act politically correct as it will only help the morons who’d continue to arm-twist everyone, especially those who don’t enjoy star power and popularity.

A precedent will help. And it will help all of us.

AIB is guilty, not of offending, but of not being fair to themselves

Guest Author
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AIB is guilty, not of offending, but of not being fair to themselves

At this point, I’ve spent a fair bit of time on watching the AIB Knockout video. While it makes no sense to throw good time after bad and write about it, I figured why not.

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way first. Was it any good? I went to watch a roast, and let’s just say that there was more sizzle than steak in the proceedings. Sure, there were a few moments, and they sadly belonged to KJo. I say sadly because I’m unable to fathom how a group of self-respecting ‘professional’ comics would let themselves be outclassed by KJo who, I don’t believe, even tried hard to outclass them.  I sure hope that they had fun ’cause I don’t think I really did.

Comedy is art. In fact, it may be one of its highest forms. You’ll have a few Picassos and Rembrandts, and the rest will end up painting graffiti on street walls, writing jingles and designing cartoon characters for lunch boxes. That’s the harsh reality. But, here’s also the thing about art: There are naturals who bloom early, late bloomers and, those who will never bloom. It’s hard to tell how things will arrange themselves. So, we have no choice but to let darwinian selection play out, and let comedians do their thing. Let them be. Let them do their thing in as free an environment as humanly possible. Else, none of them might ever bloom.

I follow a couple of the AIB comedians (on Twitter), who write some outstandingly funny stuff. Wit, as PG Wodehouse said, is the coming together of things that were previously thought to be unconnected. Even by that high, nearly unattainable standard, these guys are funny. They have their moments, which are not infrequent. You know who they are. But, if AIB KO is any indication, what the Lord doled out to them in writing talent, he seems to have deducted from their comic timing and delivery. Or, maybe these guys are late bloomers. Truth be told, these guys have chosen one of the hardest professions to make a living. It’s easy to be critical, I know. We’re not the ones up there on the stage. But, greatness is often spurred by timely, harsh feedback. It’s in the spirit of tough love that I say this. I couldn’t care less if they are loony liberals or hate NaMo or politically biased or whatever things might make others uncomfortable. They are comedians, and that’s all that matters to me, for a sense of humor is a uniting force that is often ignored in this country. I really hope they go on to do well.

The funniest thing about AIB KO is not the roast itself. It’s the uproar and hoop-la over offensiveness and vulgarity. As the old jungle saying goes, “if you can’t stand the heat, log out of YouTube.” No one compelled anyone to watch the show. What I personally find offensive (since we’re all offended, I too have caught the virus) is that no one was offended by the show being not as funny as hyped.

So, you watched AIB KO and were offended. Let’s ponder over your predicament for the brief nanosecond it deserves. What did you expect? And, so effing what? Deal with it. Life’s tough, unfair and often filled with things that will make you uncomfortable. The sooner you learn to process discomfort, the better off you’ll be. If you want a shoulder on which to cry about being upset by a video that no one asked you to watch, I hope you don’t find one. Enough with the mollycoddling. Enough with the debates around what’s offensive and what’s not. Some lines will be crossed. That’s how it goes. That’s how change happens. If you’re easily offended, watch Sesame Street and have an ice cream. Stay the eff away from videos that openly proclaim themselves to be unfriendly to your sensitive inner child. As Voltaire or Beatrice Hall or whoever put it (loosely), people have a right to being unfunny, and we must defend their right to be so. Every day, people get up in the morning and go on to make asses of themselves. Last week, it was AIB’s turn. It’s all good, bro. Chill.

It’s entirely possible that more people clicked through to the AIB video, looking to see how offended they were going to be, than in search of a good laugh. In any case, AIB wins this round handsomely with over 7 million views on YT, and counting. For that, they possibly deserve some level of hollow, insincere applause.

Since I’m a nice guy, I’ll offer some free advice: “Hey AIB, don’t settle for banal mediocrity. You need to set your sights higher than getting ripples of obviously contrived laughter from a few Bollywood hacks. Vulgar is cool if you can learn how to wield it precisely like a scalpel, and not slash it around like a lower order primate with a sword. You really need to retire the fat and KJo-gay jokes that went out in the 90s. There’s got to be funnier ways to get eyeballs and page views. Be ruthlessly fair. Be uncompromisingly great. You’re not on the hook to make us proud. Eff proud. You’re here to make us laugh. God knows that this country could get used to laughing at itself. And God knows that it’s really hard to get this country to laugh at itself. I hope to God that you’re better than KJo the next time around. You keep doing your thing. And, we’ll (hopefully) keep watching until you (hopefully) bloom. Cheers.”

– @waatho

Hindus & Christians unite to file FIR against AIB, while Liberals bring in Modi

OpIndia Staff
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Hindus & Christians unite to file FIR against AIB, while Liberals bring in Modi

Our editor @bhak_sala wrote about how he liked the #AIBRoast but was still uncomfortable about it. Now some Aam Aadmis seem to be far too uncomfortable with it. So uncomfortable that they have filed FIRs against All India Bakchod.

According to this DNA report, Akhilesh Tiwari, President of Brahman Ekta Seva Sanstha in Mumbai has filed an FIR with the police against AIB, for using “filthy and abusive language”. In his four-page complaint, Tiwari  has also sought to implicate Karan Johar, Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh on the same charges.

In a separate incident, a Catholic group called “Maharashtra Christian Youth Forum” led a Morcha which culminated into filing an FIR against AIB because they believe the show is “against Christ”. This is the same group which earlier pressurised Leela Samson, ex Censor Board chief to remove some scenes from the movie Kamaal Dhamaal Malamal.

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Twitter went crazy as soon as the news broke out as some “journalists” fixated and obsessed with Modi, tried to make it into a Modi vs the modern world issue:

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In fact, both the above FIRs will probably invoke Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code, which says:

Whoever, to the annoyance of others—
(a) does any obscene act in any public place, or
(b) sings, recites or utters any obscene song, ballad or words, in or near any public place, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine, or with both.

Just to be clear, this section existed in the Indian Penal Code for years now and has absolutely nothing to do with Modi. In fact this is the same section which is used or rather misused by Moral police when objecting to public kissing and the like.

15 Lakh Cameras: Why Arvind Kejriwal’s Foolish Plan Will Bankrupt Delhi #AAPUnplanned

OpIndia Staff
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15 Lakh Cameras: Why Arvind Kejriwal’s Foolish Plan Will Bankrupt Delhi #AAPUnplanned

Arvind Kejriwal would have the people of Delhi believe that he will install 15 lakh CCTV cameras in the city if voted to power. Women’s safety is an important issue in Delhi. A promise like this sounds extremely intriguing — a 24x7x365 CCTV network would seriously improve safety in the city. Who wouldn’t feel comforted by that? But this noble aim has totally no basis in reality.

First, let’s look at basic economics.

A quick Google search reveals that you can get a basic surveillance camera for Rs. 1,279 on Amazon. A basic one, mind you. That’s almost Rs. 200 crores straight up for the basic hardware cost itself. Now, given the scale of the order, let’s assume that the government gets a good deal. Halve the MRP and you get Rs. 100 crore. (Not a small sum in any way.)

You then need to factor in the following costs just to get the CCTV network operational:

  • Installation costs
  • Cost for network hardware and software infrastructure (since CCTV footage needs to be beamed to a server or servers to be of any use)
  • Server costs (not a pithy amount given the gigabytes of video data that are likely to be piped in)
  • Cost of Internet bandwidth to pipe footage to control rooms
  • Control room set up and operations

Straightaway, your costs escalate to the thousands of crores.

And if you don’t believe that figure, read this excellent article that lays out the details of Boston’s CCTV infrastructure. They’ve spent over $6 million — that’s over Rs. 372,581,700 — for less than 150 cameras.

On that scale, 15 lakh cameras will cost you Rs. 3,725,817,000,000. That’s Rs. 3.7 lakh crores.

To put that in perspective, the GDP of India in 2013 was Rs. 104.7 lakh crores. Delhi’s GDP for the same period was Rs. 4 lakh crores. (Source:Wikipedia). Also, Delhi’s total spending budget in 2013–14 was a measly Rs. 37,450 crore. (Source: delhi.gov.in). Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party will have us spending 3.5% of India’s GDP, or 91.5% of Delhi’s GDP, on CCTVs for Delhi.

So basically, Delhi will have barely anything left over to pay for roads, electricity, water, health and other things one would consider necessary for basic living. Let alone the rest of Kejriwal’s 70-point manifesto.

Forget the economics, lets say we have a miracle and get all the equipment for free. Is it still practical to be done in 5 years? It took Boston over 10 years to install 500 cameras. But Kejriwal and the AAP want to set up 15 lakh cameras in 5 years.

Now, assume we have (somehow) paid for these cameras. And also managed to come up with a feasible implementation plan. So let’s come to the next part of this ridiculous promise. What’ll it take to give us 24x7x365, real-time monitoring of the footage?

Delhi has 180 police stations and almost 100,000 policemen and policewomen. Assuming one cop can watch 10 cameras at a time, you’re talking about needing 1.5 lakh cops to monitor CCTV footage. And, assuming they can only do so for 8 hours a day, you need 3x that number — 4.5 lakh cops — to provide 24-hour monitoring. Which means CM Kejriwal needs to more than quadruple the size of the force to make his plan effective.

Where’s the money coming from?

More importantly, where are the people coming from?

And where are you going to seat them all? (Where’s the rent money coming from too, I ask.)

And, before making the promise, did Kejriwal ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the funding?

If you have answers to these questions, please do let me know. Or else, the next time you hear an Arvind Kejriwal promise, dig deeper.

This article has been updated to include Delhi’s 2013–14 budget and the time Boston took to set up 500 cameras.

I also wanted to include this post that values Mumbai’s 6000 cameras at Rs. 950 crore. Calculating in proportion, Delhi’s camera network works out to about Rs. 2.37 lakh crores. Even though it’s less than my original estimate, I believe the point still stands.

(This post originally appeared here)

– @Samit

Top lies spread by Mainstream Media – January 2015

Gaurav
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Top lies spread by Mainstream Media – January 2015

Partly on public demand and partly thanks to our Indian Mainstream Media’s untiring dedication to publish fiction under the garb of News, I thought of making this a monthly feature. I would like to thank all those in the media who continue to fearlessly write Imaginary stories, without giving two hoots to facts.

In the course of the month, thanks to our articles, we managed to expose “source” based Pakistani propaganda by a journalist, made Firstpost delete an article and made NDTV anchor Ravish Kumar secretly update the lies he posted on NDTV. Read to find out how:

1. 2nd January 2015, Praveen Swami in The Indian Express: Doubts mount over India’s claims of destroying ‘terror boat’ from Pakistan

This has been one of the most debated topics this year. In fact I wrote an entire post dissecting each and every claim of Praveen Swami. I havent received any convincing rebuttal for the same. You can read the above post and decide, how much is the truth, how much is lies, how much is conjecture and how much is Pakistani Propaganda.

2. 7th January 2015, The Telegraph, and subsequently all Indian Media: First new antibiotic in 30 years discovered in major breakthrough

The problem here is only limited to the claim that no new antibiotic was discovered for 30 years on this planet!. Thanks to @ARangarajan1972, Contributing editor of Newslaundry, I realised that there were many antibiotics discovered in the past few years. As per the Journal of American Chemical society, “a New Class of Non-β-lactam Inhibitors” was discovered in February last year. And a Japanese team discovered a new antibiotic effective against MSRA just in December 2014. @ARangarajan1972 has posted further links here.

3. 23rd January 2015, Firstpost by Sandipan Sharma : Padma Award to Ramdev is wrong: He’s a business tycoon, thanks to blind faith

Its amazing how the same class of lies which was featured in our year-ender post for Lies of 2014, ends up in this list to. Once again a reporter has used data available on a fraudulent site which clearly says it has no links to Baba Ramdev, and used this data to malign Ramdev. The report claimed Ramdev Baba had cures for “premature ejaculation” and other such weird ailments. A detailed report was done by us here. (Firstpost eventually had to delete the post thanks to our report)

4. 27th January 2015, Firstpost: Republic blunder: Modi govt ad omits ‘Socialist, Secular’ from Constitution preamble

We had a separate story on this entire issue, when some people on social media raised the above point, but I was surprised to see Firstpost tow the same line, even after numerous people had shared the truth. Firstpost claimed that the Modi Government, “made a glaring error” by “removing the words socialist and secular” from the Preamble of the Constitution. It tried to give it a communal tone by further saying that “the fact that the word ‘secular’ has been omitted is significant” and tried to link this with controversial remarks by Hindutva leaders and Ghar Wapsi campaign.

The fact is, the Indian Government merely chose the original, unamended Preamble. This is still available online. This makes it clear that nobody from the Government “removed” anything.

5. 28th January 2015: Ravish Kumar NDTV: I Am Not a Super-Journalist, Says Ravish Kumar

The post you see in the above link, is an edited version, which Ravish was forced to update surreptitiously, After I exposed his lies in this post. He made “Sub-Inspector” Nirmal Singh, into “ACP” Nirmal Singh, to discredit Kiran Bedi from the Indira Gandhi car towing incident. And then he distorted “PM House” to “PMO” to further trivialise the incident. Both these wilful lies were later rectified once above post went viral. Please read the post for details on how he used these two lies to further his agenda.

6. 29th January 2015: Siddharth Varadarajan NDTV: How PM has Sidelined Sushma Swaraj Again

This piece referred to the replacing of Sujatha Singh by S Jaishankar as India’s foreign secretary. Varadarajan claimed that Sushma Swaraj was sidelined and “was not party to Jaishankar’s appointment“.  Sushma Swaraj had to resort to twitter to clarify the position:


Varadarajan’s assertion that Sushma was “sidelined” and was “arguably the least empowered External Affairs Minister” also was based on this claim by him: “Sushma is not a member of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet“. While it is true that Sushma is not on the said committee, Varadarajan has very slyly used this truth to deceive the reader. The only reason Sushma is not part of the committee is because Modi reconstituted the committee way back in June 2014. Earlier this committee comprised of the PM along with the concerned minister (in this case Sushma), but now, it comprised only of the PM and the Home Minister. By this duplicitous logic, one can claim ALL ministers were “sidelined” and thus were “one of the least empowered” ministers ever.

7. 31st January 2015: Times of India and CNN IBN: EC raid at Naresh Balyan’s residence, more than 5,000 liquor bottles seized

Times of India was the first to report this news, via their Tweets and Facebook status that the Election Commission had raided the house of Naresh Balyan, AAP candidate in Delhi Assembly elections, and found more than 5000 liquor bottles. There was outrage on Twitter for almost 2 hours, after which Times of India, itself issued a correction denying the earlier report that this raid had not been conducted in any AAP leader’s house. Later Aaj Tak had a report that the EC had filed a case against “Unknown Persons” as it had no evidence to link this raid to any AAP leader. We reported about this here. (EDIT: On 3rd February Times of India reported that the cops had indeed found proof that the liquor bottles were related to AAP candidate Naresh Balyan. But we believe, that on 31st January neither the cops nor Times of India had any proof to hold AAP responsible, hence it was a “lie” on that day)

Who Muted Bombay? Leela Samson or Pahlaj Nihalani?

OpIndia Staff
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Who Muted Bombay? Leela Samson or Pahlaj Nihalani?

On 1st February 2015, when Scroll.in published its report that the Censor Board forced a singer to bleep out the word ‘Bombay’ from his music video, it created a huge outrage on social media. The entropy of Social Media increased manifold and the censor board, and directly or indirectly, the new Censor Board was under the target. Since the day Leela Samson and her team have resigned from the board, fingers have been raised at the BJP government, and every attempt has been made to malign the current Board members, by liberal bigots who claim to be Bollywood faces.

As we highlighted earlier, Scroll.in was very quick to jump to conclusions, without confirming the facts and without clarifying the date of censor certification. Finally today morning, the artist whose song was censored, Mihir Joshi, put out the following tweet with the Censor certificate attached.

It is clear from the picture that this act of censorship was done by the previous Censor Board, headed by Leela Samson, since the date of the certificate is 05/12/2014, while the new Censor Board took office more than a month later. Yet, last night we saw some of the usual suspects trying to attribute this to the BJP Government, and the new Censor chief Pahlaj Nihalani, so that they can further their Political Agenda:

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It is shocking to see some of the above tweets have come from “Journalists”.

OpIndia.com team also interacted with Vivek Agnihotri (Filmmaker) to understand if Censor Board had similar concerns with “Bombay” before this event. Vivek said “Bombay has always been banned. It was never allowed. So many makers have changed dialogues”, however, the Censor allows Bombay for historical contexts.

It is interesting to note that none of the journalists mentioned above tried to clarify which Board took this decision. Even Scroll.in, which claims to be a news portal, has neglected or deliberately ignored the basic requirement of journalism, i.e., time-frame of the report and the historical context. If it was made clear to the reader that this censorship of the word “Bombay” is an old stand, then we might not have seen so much outrage. Hope we see some sensible journalism and not sensationalised journalism in the future.

Kumar Vishwas – Victim or Habitual Offender of making controversial remarks?

OpIndia Staff
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Kumar Vishwas – Victim or Habitual Offender of making controversial remarks?

Kumar Vishwas is again in the news for the wrong reasons. He is alleged to have made a sexist remark on BJP CM candidate Kiran Bedi. The BJP has now filed a police complaint against Kumar Vishwas. Kumar Vishwas is alleged to have said, in reference to Kiran Bedi, “Do you have to sleep with him in his bedroom or what?“.

But on seeing the complete video (shown below) it is clear that Kumar Vishwas said “Do you have to sleep in his bedroom” in reference to BJP supporters as a whole, and not Bedi. Hence the allegation that it is sexist doesn’t stand. It can be called vulgar, but it isn’t sexist.

Then why is BJP making an issue out of this? Is it because Kumar Vishwas’s reputation precedes him? Kumar Vishwas has been a habitual offender in making Racist, Sexist and Controversial remarks. Some time back he was in the dock for his racist remarks calling nurses from Malayam “Kaali-Peeli”:

In another video, which was probably from the time he wasn’t in AAP, he is seen glorifying the gruesome 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre by Islamic Terrorists. He refers to the 9/11 attack as a “Festival given to the world by his brothers from Afghanistan” and calls it “Laden Ekadashi”.

Whether these frequent slip-ups from Vishwas are deliberate or unintentional is not known but they can surely put him trouble. Maybe every party needs a motor-mouth to say the things which its main leaders cannot say in public, and Kumar Vishwas is that loose cannon for AAP.

Times of India wrongly blames AAP candidate for storing 5000+ liquor bottles?

OpIndia Staff
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Times of India wrongly blames AAP candidate for storing 5000+ liquor bottles?

On Saturday morning, Times of India via the below tweet created a storm on Twitter, when it alleged that the Election Commission had raided AAP candidate Naresh Balyan’s residence and siezed more than 5000 Liquor bottles.

Untitled

 

Expectedly, there was wide spread outrage on Twitter which ridiculed AAP for using corrupt practices to secure votes:


But within two hours of their first tweet, Times of India took a U-Turn and tweeted the below tweet, after deleting its original tweet.


While the raid had actually happened, it wasn’t at Naresh Balyan’s residence. This Aaj Tak report also corroborated the same by saying that the Election Commission hadn’t been able to verify to whom the godown belonged, hence a case was filed against “Unknown Persons”. It further added that some Media sources have said that AAP candidate Naresh Balyan had some connection with the said godown, but no evidence proving the same had been obtained.

Soon AAP spokesperson Atishi Marlena took to Twitter to clarify the incident. She via her tweets confirmed that there was an EC raid, which seized liquor bottles, but it was apparently on a godown owned by a person named “Mukesh Balyan”. She went ahead and said that the Election Commission had filed a case against “unknown persons”.

Another AAP leader Vishal Dadlani went a step ahead and alleged that the shop was owned by a BJP supporter:


Its interesting that Atishi Marlena and Vishal Dadlani claim to know the owner of the godown, yet the Election Commission chose to file a case against “unknown persons”. Also, as per our search, there is no person with the name “Mukesh Balyan” in the Delhi voters list. The media must learn to stop sensationalising news and must verify facts before publishing them.

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