Dhruv Rathee

Losing Monopoly on the Narrative: Modi Govt Moves to Throttle Creators, Independent Journalism

These creators are independent individuals on social media who cannot be licensed or regulated in the way that news channels can. That is why the government is moving to gain control over them.

The dictionary defines the word “propaganda” as being “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view”. In Old India, propaganda was managed by controlling Doordarshan. Or at least that is what political parties assumed. The news segments in the evenings reported on the government and its agenda. The opposition was given no space. This was accepted as being natural.

During elections, however, the opposition would demand to be given as much screen time as the ruling party, especially in delivering their manifestos. Party leaders would read them out in front of the camera, and smaller parties would then ask to be given as much time as the larger ones. With the coming of private news channels a quarter century ago, this changed and instead of Doordarshan, or perhaps along with it at least in the initial years, senior party leaders would come to panels in studios. It seemed that this was the dawn of independence and some of the senior journalists around today are the product of that time, particularly those who were in the old Star News segment which became NDTV.

The phenomenon of “Godi media” beginning in the months before 2014 took us back considerably to propaganda. This time it was worse than in Old India and more damaging. On Doordarshan, the opposition was merely ignored; it was not daily vilified and attacked and called anti-national. On Doordarshan, even when it was in the hands of hypocrites, the minorities were not the constant target and distraction was not the only game. In New India, this became the daily fare of the channels and have remained so for a decade.

But a third shift has now come, and while it is relatively recent it is so fully established that the government is moving to gain control over it. That shift is the rise of independent journalists using the social media to reach large audiences. This includes the set of people known as content creators, who might not necessarily be journalists by background but engage with current affairs through humour, particularly satire.

How large are their audiences? Have a look at the numbers. On YouTube, independent journalists have as much reach as news channels. Punya Prasun Bajpai (47 lakh subscribers), Ajit Anjum (61 lakh), Abhisar Sharma (67 lakh) and Ravish Kumar (1.1 crore) can rival entire news networks. Times Now (53 lakh subscribers), Republic (62 lakh) and India Today (93 lakh) are in the same region.

Dhruv Rathee (2.3 crore subscribers) has as much reach as Zee News (3.6 crore). Indeed, in many ways the reach of the independent voices is more because of the concentration of their content on one specific daily issue.

The average Ravish Kumar video gets over 10 lakh views while the average one from Zee gets a few thousand, because there are so many of them. Distribution of these clips through WhatsApp further amplifies the independent voice’s reach. The sharing of advertising revenue by social media networks like YouTube afford these individuals the opportunity to be able to do their work outside of a corporate space. In addition to the journalists, a set of humourists has risen to comment on our times. They are a product of the stranglehold of the Godi media and the suffocation people have felt of having propaganda inflicted on them. A few names are worthy of mention, like Bhagat Ram, Ms Medusa, Meghnad, Garima, Ranting Gola, Shyam Rangeela and Urvish Kothari, all of whom I follow and greatly admire and whose work I enjoy.

Unfortunately for the government, there are few quality creators on the other side. This is because propaganda and sycophancy are not good ingredients for humour. Godi creators tend to produce content that is sullen and angry and for this reason generally ignored.

It will take an academic paper or a book to examine the effect of the independent voices on our democracy. There is to my mind little doubt that they have managed to loosen the monopoly of the Narendra Modi government on narrative.

It is for this reason that the government has moved to throttle the voices of the creators and independent journalists. This is being done through the broadcast bill, a draft of which is being circulated. Essentially, it seeks to regulate everyone who is on the social media because that is the only way in which the government can interfere, block and ban content it doesn’t want seen. The government is also trying to go after independent websites like The Wire, Scroll, Newslaundry and Newsminute.

Because these creators are independent individuals on social media, they cannot be licensed or regulated in the way that news channels can. This is why the government is attempting to do this with the broadest of definitions that will affect every single person using the social media. The intent might be to use the law in targeted fashion but that will not be how it will turn out. Bad laws produce bad outcomes. Will the Modi government be successful in pushing the regulation through? It will not. This is not the same place we were last year. There are too many obstacles for it and too many points of resistance.

Even if it had been passed in the previous Parliament through brute force, it would have been a total mess in implementation. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet will be compelled to do what governments in other democracies must: listen to criticism from citizens and tolerate it and even learn from it. In doing so, perhaps they can also get a laugh out of the material, as many of us so often do.

Aakar Patel is an author and columnist.

Who Does June 4 Belong to?

This is the collective win of millions.

June 4 will go down as the day democracy came back from the dead in India, the day the almighty Bharatiya Janta Party failed to get even a simple majority in what former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa has called the “hottest and most hateful” Lok Sabha elections, ever.

Most of all, it will be remembered as the day the power of Narendra Modi was broken.

The politician who, over the years had earned epithets such as “He Who Must Not Be Named”, “He For Whom There is No Alternative” and less flatteringly, “Divider-In-Chief”, has been defeated for the first time in his political life. He wasn’t a god and non-biological, after all.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

The world looks sane again.

The day belongs to the Opposition. Of that, there is no doubt. It belongs to Rahul Gandhi who walked across the country despite a damaged knee and created a new kind of samvaad with the people of India. It also belongs to Akhilesh Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav, who, though he did not perform quite as well as he would have liked, possibly broke all campaigning records. It belongs to every karyakarta and leader of every political party who did not capitulate in the face of an ED raid or the threat of arrest. It belongs to Hemant Soren and Kalpana Soren.

Even more, it belongs to the unseen millions who fought the poisonous hate of the RSS and its divisive Hindutva day in and day out.

It belongs to Umar Khalid who has been in jail for the last three years for promoting unity and non-violence, and to his brave partner, Banojyotsna, whose wry sense of humour and raw courage has sustained her. (Release Umar already!)

It belongs to Father Stan Swamy who lived his life for the tribals of India and who was denied even a sipper during his last hellish days in Taloja Jail.

The day belongs to Sudha Bhardwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Rona Wilson, G.N. Saibaba and everyone who was arrested in the farcical Elgar Parishad case.

June 4 belongs, in very large part, to farmers like Sukhdarshan Natt and his wife, Jasbir Kaur, who spent a year camped on the road at Delhi’s Tikri border with lakhs of other farmers protesting against Modi’s three draconian farm laws. When I told them on one of my many sojourns to the Tikri border that I was grieving the death of my mother who had passed away just a few months ago, Jasbir ji told me, “Anytime you miss her too much, come and stay with us. We are your family, too.”

June 4 belongs to the more than seven hundred farmers who died protesting Modi’s dictatorship. It belongs to that old farmer who was mowed down by Ajay Misra Teni’s son in Lakhimpur in that horrific phone video.

June 4 belongs to Pooja, the political science teacher, who quietly continued to teach her students the chapters on democracy and the freedom movement long after the government had ordered them removed from the syllabus.

The day belongs to those aging but ageless men and women who walked the roads, day in and day out, jholaas slung over their shoulders – like Roop Rekha Verma and others – distributing pamphlets on love, peace, harmony and democracy. They could have, in the autumn of their lives, sat comfortably in the confines of their homes and played with their grandchildren but they cared enough about others’ grandkids to go out on the streets and talk about the future of democracy.

Then there is Engineer Rashid and the political prisoners of Jammu and Kashmir.

This day belongs to my friend Novita, the filmmaker from Punjab, who covered the 2020 farmers’ protest, stayed with the farmers, and documented their stories despite the toll it took on her health.

This day belongs to Prabir Purkayastha.

This day belongs to so many people who did what they could to bring India back from the brink. June 4 would not have been possible without them.

The day belongs to Ravish Kumar and his family. It belongs to all those thousands of journalists, YouTubers, bloggers and writers who did not give up and continued to give the news and speak the truth. It belongs to Dhruv Rathee.

Yes, the NDA still has a majority in Parliament but the Opposition won a battle against impossible odds. Never again will Narendra Modi be able to impose his malevolent will on India the way he has these past ten years.

This is the collective win of millions.

June 4 belongs to India.

Rohit Kumar is an educator, author and independent journalist and can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com.

Read all of The Wire’s reporting and analysis of the 2024 election results here.

‘Nothing Provocative or Illegal’: Lawyer Booked for Sharing Dhruv Rathee’s ‘Modi Dictator’ Video

Adesh Bansode, a Vasai-based lawyer, shared it on a lawyers’ group. Little did he know that it would irk a few and that he would be arrested.

Mumbai: On May 19, YouTuber and political commentator Dhruv Rathee posted a 29-minute video titled ‘The Narendra Modi Files | A DICTATOR Mentality?’.

The video, like most of his work, went viral in no time and garnered over 15 million views. In this video, Rathee critically looks at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governance over the past two decades – first, as the chief minister of Gujarat and then as the country’s prime minister. He terms his approach “dictatorial”.

While the video continues to be widely shared across social media platforms, the Vasai-based Manikpur police have considered sharing of this video a “crime”.

The police have registered an FIR against Adesh Bansode, a city-based lawyer and also a state secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) for sharing the video on a WhatsApp group of lawyers. Bansode shared the video on May 20, the day when the fifth phase of the ongoing general election was scheduled. Residents of constituencies in Mumbai and other suburban areas were voting on that day. With the video, Bansode shared a short message in Marathi that read, “Do watch this video before you set out to vote.”

The message had “nothing provocative in it,” Bansode tells The Wire. “Nor did I ask anyone to vote for a particular party,” he adds.

The video, however, irked a few among the 50 members of the ‘Bar Association of Vasai’ WhatsApp group.

An ‘untenable’ FIR

A first information report was subsequently registered and Bansode was booked under section Section 188, 171 (F), 171 (G) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 123(4) of the Representation of the People Act (RPA). Section 188 applies when a person tends to or causes danger to human life with his disobedience; Section 171 (F) defines punishment for undue influence or personation at an election and Section 171 (G) is applied when a person makes false statement in connection with an election. Similarly, section 123 (4) of the RPA can be applied when a person, who is either a candidate or an agent of a candidate and puts out a statement which is false.

Bansode agrees that he is not just the state secretary of the CPI (M-L) party, but also the polling agent of the party’s candidate from Palghar constituency. “But my sharing of that video was in no way violating any law,” he says.

Since the FIR, Bansode had to secure bail against a surety of Rs 10,000. Bansode, who is a practicing lawyer, says that not just the sections applied in the FIR but the very basis of this FIR is “untenable”. Section 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) very clearly lays down a procedure, he says. “The police should have first approached a magistrate and only on the court’s order could they have booked me under these sections,” he points out.

But after he secured bail, police sent a notice to Bansode asking him to hand over his phone for investigation. Bansode, meanwhile, filed an application under the Right to Information Act, asking under what law sharing a message on social media is prohibited.

In the RTI response, he shares, he learnt that police took action against him citing the fact that cops had prohibited sending out bulk messages. “But WhatsApp doesn’t allow bulk messaging. I didn’t indulge in any kind of propaganda on WhatsApp or any other platform. It was one simple message on the group and I had not endorsed any candidate,” he reiterates.

A month-old dispute

Bansode says the complainant, Jayant Walinjkar, also an advocate, might have had motivations to approach the police because of a month-old dispute. The dispute has its roots in the fact that the four bar associations in Vasai had planned to celebrate Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Jotiba Phule and Chhatrapati Shivaji’s birth anniversaries.

“Walinjkar got into a fight with few women lawyers when they approached the bar association for some furniture for the celebrations. It was totally uncalled for and when the situation went out of control, I, along with a few others, complained against Walinjkar. This particular FIR against me could be an outcome of that anger,” Bansode says.

Bansode adds that the FIR against him is also symptomatic of what is happening to public and private institutions across the country. “A simple birth anniversary celebration (of national figures) has become impossible. You seek permission and it is denied. The administration will come up with hundred different excuses and deny you a permission,” he claims.

A surprisingly quick police

Vasai falls under the Mira-Bhayander Vasai-Virar (MBVV) Commissionerate. The police’s promptness to act on Walinjkar’s complaint needs to be understood in the region’s socio-political context as well. In January, when riots broke out in the Mira Road area and many youths belonging to Muslim community were targeted and their properties were destroyed, the police had dragged its feet, refusing to file an FIR in many cases. Many victims of the violence had accused the police of showing communal bias in handling their complaints.

The commissioner of police Madhukar Pandey had, in fact, had allowed Nitish Rane – a sitting MLA and among the primary accused who is alleged to have provoked the riots – to hold a press conference in his office.

Today, June 1, several lawyers and activists came together under a banner ‘Sarva Paksha Sangharsh Samiti,’ which loosely translates to ‘all party struggle committee’ and protested against the police’s action against Bansode.

Watch | The Wire Wrap: Mood in UP, Campaign Overview, Payal Kapadia, ‘Alternate’ Media, Rafah

The Wire’s Jahnavi Sen speaks to documentary filmmaker and Chal Chitra Abhiyan founder Nakul Singh Sawhney and The Wire’s Editor Seema Chishti.

Uttar Pradesh sends the highest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha, at 80. BJP leaders have claimed that they are winning all 80 of these seats; in 2019 the National Democratic Alliance had won 64 of seats and the BJP on its own had won 62. The INDIA alliance has responded to this by saying that this time, they are going to win 79 of the 80 seats, and are in competition for the last one. Beyond the political rhetoric, what is the mood on the ground? The Wire‘s Jahnavi Sen speaks to documentary filmmaker and Chal Chitra Abhiyan founder Nakul Singh Sawhney and The Wire‘s Editor Seema Chishti on what they witnessed in the state.

The three also discuss what the political campaign landscape has looked like during this Lok Sabha election, Payal Kapadia’s win at the Cannes film festival and what that signifies, the growth of ‘alternate’ media voices and the most recent attacks by Israel on Rafah, Palestine.

Dhruv Rathee’s Viral Video Lists ‘4 Stages’ of How Indians Are ‘Being Brainwashed’

Four stages of the “Lies Factory”, says Rathee, are using WhatsApp to spread hate via misinformation. He gives a call, Mission 100, for circulating messages to expose the brainwashing, for eventually dismantling WhatsApp University, saying 1.5 crore motivated people to save India far outweigh paid IT cells.

New Delhi: Dhruv Rathee in his viral video on the “brainwashing of Indians”, which has close to 12 million views, has put out a four-set methodology through which dark social media or the WhatsApp universe is weaponised and, over time, used to twist narratives.

He first talks about the “WhatsApp Mafia” and how nobody has stopped it, so it has now “become a monster”. This WhatsApp mafia he says “targets Hindus”. The example of Hitler brainwashing “German Aryans”, using Jews and Zia ul Haq using Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims as bugbears to brainwash Sunni Muslims.

Rathee is a widely followed and admired YouTube video-maker whose earlier videos on dictatorship have crossed well over 50 million views.

He says “chronology samajhiye”

The first ‘department’ he says is “pride”. There is no hate initially, but to ensnare people, it is eulogisation. To speak of exaggerated claims of culture, history etc.

Department number two he says is “victimisation and self-pity” on how, for centuries, “they” have ruled over us and thwarted our potential greatness and identity. Rathee says this is the breaking point, after which, department number three or “you are in danger” is an easy leap towards, of scaring the cohort. This is where misinformation is used, exaggerated and sharpened. Muslims and Christians are demonised further, then opposition parties are drawn in and the other made larger by throwing in billionaire Soros, Pakistan, China and more to scare people further, as of them being at risk.

After having created enough scare, says Rathee, comes in department number four, which is the Modi cult of personality. The saviour cult is created at this stage, as part of a big systematic campaign of departments 1, 2 and 3. “Modi ji” as answer to “who will save us”, by almost referring to him as an avatar.

He says that people are deliberately pushed down “an emotional rollercoaster” as happened in Germany in the 1930s, not via WhatsApp then but via other media, films, radio and cinema.

Rathee has elaborated on how founders of Hindutva, Savarkar and Golwalkar were known admirers of Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Watch this section, here:

Rathee says Indians must vote, save democracy and remember Gandhi, Bose, Bhagat Singh and Dr. Ambedkar as they gear up to defeat lies.

He has urged all those watching him to become a part of truth-telling via, what he has termed, ‘Mission 100’ and circulate messages to expose the brainwashing, for eventually dismantling ‘WhatsApp University,’ saying 1.5 crore motivated and people committed to save India far outweigh paid IT cells.

Earlier this year, The World Economic Forum report had said, the risk of false information was the highest in India. There have been several academic studies, other analyses and reports on how misinformation has many sources, but the biggest challenge it poses to Indian democracy is how misinformation is “baked into” the campaign of the ruling party, which dominates the narrative.

Rathee in a special interview with Karan Thapar on April 12 for The Wire, spoke about himself, his childhood and upbringing, his training as a mechanical engineer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and also what motivates him to make videos and the extent of preparation and effort put into each of them. He also to spoke about political issues such as his view of Modi and whether India is becoming a dictatorship. Rathee said that his message to the Indian people is brief and simple: “Vote karne jayen to sarkar ko nikal phenke (When you go to vote, throw out the government).”

Rathee said that he has faith that his 2.5 crore audience will heed his request for each person to share his video with another 100 people who, in turn, will respond to his message to vote out the Modi government.

Watch | “Modi is 80% a Dictator and a Darpok”; I Call on Indian Voters to Throw Him Out

In conversation with Dhruv Rathee.

Dhruv Rathee, a widely followed and admired YouTube video-maker, whose last two videos on dictatorship have together achieved nearly 50 million views, has said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “70-80% a dictator”, adding that like all ‘tanashahs’ he is “a darpok”, insecure and lacking in confidence. He’s called upon the Indian people to throw out the Modi government.

In a special interview to talk about himself, his childhood and upbringing, his training as a mechanical engineer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, his marriage to his wife Juli and also what motivates him to make videos and the extent of preparation and effort put into each of them, but also to talk about political issues such as his view of Modi whether India is becoming a dictatorship, Rathee said that his message to the Indian people is brief and simple: “Vote karne jayen to sarkar ko nikal phenke (When you go to vote, throw out the government).”

Rathee says that he has faith that his 2.5 crore audience will heed his request for each person to share his video with another 100 people who, in turn, will respond to his message to vote out the Modi government.

Resisting Dictatorship, One Video at a Time

At a time when big media platforms have deployed all their resources to glorify the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a video asking if India is headed towards dictatorship getting mass viewership assumes greater significance.

She feels distraught

because she does not get complete information

what can I do to help him

she depends on me for love,

Every time she knows something incomplete,

or one day she’ll stop asking

Or when she will be reprimanded for asking

one day suddenly some day

taking a deep breath

She will turn her face away quietly.

These are the lines from late poet Raghuvir Sahay’s poem ‘Uska Man’. In the poem, he is talking about a woman. But, as is the case with every great poem, its pronoun can be used in different contexts.

In the context of today’s India, does this pronoun ‘she’ represent the collective noun we know as public? Not getting information can be a reason for being distraught. Just as it is difficult for a woman to survive as an individual without information, information is the lifeline for people in any democracy.

This poem came to my mind when I saw YouTuber Dhruv Rathee’s latest video that is creating a sensation on social media platforms.

When we thought, and not wrongly, that India was sleepwalking into a dictatorship, the news of this video being watched by more than 10 million people came as a shock to many of us. Especially the fact that the video is getting popular among the youth.

At a time when big media platforms have deployed all their resources to glorify this government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when the same name is being chanted everywhere, when all that our top intellectuals say is that in May 2024, Modi will return as the prime minister, when we are told that the die is cast, just then a video appears warning the people that they are offering themselves to a dictator and starts spreading like fire. What does it mean?

Is this a sign that there is still a hunger to know the truth in India? Are the people of India ready to fight to save themselves from being transformed from citizens into subjects? At a time when almost everyone has given up because no one wants to hear anything, what does the extraordinary viewership of this video tell us?

In the video, Dhruv explains, very calmly, why and how dictatorship is gradually taking root in India under the guise of democracy. The point is being made in a logical manner and without any excitement or pompous words. Perhaps this is the reason why this video is being watched. Dhruv is not saying anything new, this analysis has been reported many times and by many people before him. But it should not undermine the significance of the video.

Supporters of the Modi government fear that the viewers of this video might primarily belong to the age group of first and second time voters. This is not an unfounded fear. I heard my wife’s nephew calling from Mumbai asking her to watch this video. He is not a typical Modi detractor. There would be many like him asking their parents and relatives to watch it. That is alarming for the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Modi.

Another proof of the video’s impact is that the pro-government camp has already pressed some social media influencers into action to counter Rathee. All of a sudden there are also those recalling Rathee’s political inclination, informing us that he has been a supporter of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), hence there must be an ulterior motive behind this video. There is also an argument that while Rathee is calling Modi a dictator in the video, signs of dictatorship can be found in the politics of Arvind Kejriwal.

Does this prove the point of this video wrong? Do the facts and arguments of this video become false because Rathee’s political sympathies lie with a party which can be potentially dangerous? Should Rathee have also told his viewers that there is a danger of Kejriwal becoming a dictator and only then his analysis of Modi would become credible?

Are we saying that it is pointless to criticise the BJP or Modi because others can also turn out to be the same? If we are looking for a pure democratic leader and party upon whose arrival only should this government be replaced, then we are preparing to push ourselves into an abyss that we will never escape.

Rathee is giving information which is the lifeblood of democracy. It is not surprising that the first thing a dictator wants to do is to clamp down on sources of information. There will be only one source of information and that is the mouth of the dictator. The rest will only be his loudspeakers. Be it Stalin or Mao, Hitler or Mussolini, every dictator wants this. Just his image, just his voice. The leader is the journalist, the economist, the sociologist, the poet, the psychologist and the philosopher. He is the chief priest and he is the king. When one voice continues to be poured day and night in the public’s ears, they gradually lose the ability to listen to other voices.

At such a time, those who understand the value of democracy fulfil their duty of keeping the public’s ears alive, regardless of how many ears are ready for it. Their job is to keep the ears alert. And for that, the nutrition of true information is required.

The popularity of Rathee’s video only means that this is no time to become pessimistic before the inevitability of dictatorship. People want to live. And what should we do if we love these people who want to live? Act like Dhruv Rathee. It is not very difficult.

Apoorvanand is an academic and an author.

SC Mulls if Retweeting is Endorsement as Kejriwal Says ‘No Problem Admitting Mistake’

The apex court has asked if the defamation case filed against Kejriwal by a person who claims to be a fan of PM Modi fan could be withdrawn.

New Delhi: At the Supreme Court on February 26, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, represented by Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, noted that there would be “no problem in admitting” that retweeting a 2018 video made by content creator Dhruv Rathee, if “he had known that these would be the consequences.”

The apex court then asked if the defamation case filed against Kejriwal by Vikas Sankrityan alias Vikas Pandey, a self-claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi fan according to Bar and Bench, could be withdrawn in the light of this fact.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta also said that the question of whether Kejriwal’s retweet amounted to endorsing defamatory content or whether he “just shared something [he] saw online” was a matter of evidence during trial in such cases.

Singhvi, according to the LiveLaw report had argued that the complaint was based solely on a retweet and that the original complaint was withdrawn before it was filed again nine months later.

“It’s an exact retweet. No addition, no deletion. Nothing,” Singhvi added.

Later, he said that his client, Kejriwal, was willing to admit that the retweet was a mistake if he had known of the consequences. “There’s no problem in admitting that this was a mistake if he had known that these would be the consequences,” Singhvi said.

The bench was hearing a plea by Kejriwal to quash the criminal defamation case Pandey filed against him after he retweeted Rathee’s video. Rathee uploaded the video in 2018, in two parts. They have claims by one Mahavir Prasad that Pandey had offered Rs 50 lakhs to Prasad through a middleman to recant allegations that the BJP IT cell spreads lies and fake news.

LiveLaw has reported that the apex court allowed time to the Pandey – represented by advocate Raghav Awasthi – to decide whether he was agreeable to the case being closed. The trial court was instructed not to take up the matter in the meantime.

The matter will be heard again on March 11.

Three Shown in Sting Clips Now in Saffron Camp, BJP Removes Its Narada Video From YouTube

Suvendu Adhikari, Mukul Roy and Sovan Chatterjee – all TMC leaders when the clips were released in 2016 – are now in the BJP.

Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party has removed from its official YouTube channel, a video containing sting clips shot by the news portal Narada in 2014, purportedly showing then Trinamool Congress leaders accepting bribes. The removal, it has been reported by The Telegraph newspaper, appears to have been triggered by the fact that three of the TMC leaders incriminated in the video have now joined BJP.

The latest move from the TMC to BJP, and one which has been widely publicised by the saffron party, was that of former state minister and Medinipur leader Suvendu Adhikari’s. Adhikari also reportedly appears in one of the sting operation clips released by Narada in 2016, before the Bengal assembly election.

Two other leaders who appear in the videos and have since moved to the BJP are one of the TMC’s founding members, Mukul Roy, and former Kolkata mayor Sovan Chatterjee. The person who Narada claimed was Chatterjee was seen wrapping the bribe notes received in a towel and complaining that they were not dollars. Chatterjee’s role in the BJP has been a matter of intense speculation, while Roy has climbed fast into a place of clear prominence in the Bengal BJP hierarchy.

Also read: Dissent Boils Over in West Bengal BJP Due to Induction of TMC Leaders

The Narada videos were, notably, first screened at the BJP’s state wing headquarters in Kolkata in the presence of reporters.

Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister and BJP’s Bengal minder, Siddharth Nath Singh, hosted the press conference held after the screening of the Narada videos. The same Singh was named by Adhikari on Saturday, December 19, when he addressed a crowd in Amit Shah’s presence after joining BJP as a leader who had facilitated his meeting with Shah.

The video on the BJP’s YouTube channel, according to Telegraph, was visible until recently. But since Saturday, it has been shared on social media several times. Some of those sharing it were influencers with lakhs of followers.

4 years ago, BJP had posted sting operation of these two politicians caught taking bribes.

Both Mukul Roy and Suvendhu Adhikari have now joined BJP happily. pic.twitter.com/RumeIigGp0

— Dhruv Rathee 🇮🇳 (@dhruv_rathee) December 20, 2020

The video was soon taken down and what remains on the channel on the Narada scandal now are speeches by Narendra Modi and Shah, mentioning the corruption of TMC leaders.

A total of 11 TMC leaders were purportedly seen in the videos, which gave the campaigns of opposition parties like the Left, Congress and BJP ammunition before the election four years ago. The videos were released after news on the Rs 15000-crore Sarada scam broke, incriminating a set of TMC leaders, some of whom were also among the Narada 11. However, the TMC won the polls that year, even though Mamata Banerjee’s reputation as an incorruptible leader received a significant blow in the aftermath of the scandal.

The CBI and ED are running parallel investigations into the sting and the rolls of politicians showed in the videos.