BJP's Sambit Patra calls NDTV "anti-India, anti-Hindu, anti-BJP" in Melbourne, Australia, skips Q&A session
In a move that is likely to further plunge BJP, especially Sambit Patra, into controversy, the national spokesperson of the party has once again come down heavily on the NDTV, this time on foreign land. He described NDTV as “anti-India, anti-Hindu and anti-BJP” during his visit to Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday.
Patra is currently touring Australian cities to “celebrate” the Narendra Mod government’s three years in power, and he reportedly made the remark in an answer to a Melbourne-based “South Asia Times” (SAT) correspondent, who questioned him about the well-known NDTV episode of June 2, in which he wondered, during a live debate, whether the channel had an “agenda” -- suggesting if it supported the Congress.
No sooner Patra made the remark, Nidhi Razdan, executive editor, and primary anchor of NDTV asked the BJP national spokesperson to go out of the debate show, 'Left Right and Centre'. Razdan called Patra's as a “derogatory statement about her channel”.
Razdan was hosting a debate on the politics of cattle ban and its consequences that saw a prominent BJP leader in Meghalaya, Bernard Marak, quitting the party in protest. ‘Left Right and Centre’ is a live broadcast show which covers current debates.
The show had a panel of five members -- Congress’ Sharmistha Mukherjee, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam spokesperson Saravanan, Director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Sanjoy Hazarika, and BJP's spokesperson Sambit Patra. They were also debating over the issue of the public slaughter of a cow by Youth Congress members in Kerala.
An agitated Razdan, on hearing Patra’s remark, asked Patra to either apologise or leave the debate. However, as Patra refused, the anchor gently asked Patra to quit the show. Patra kept saying that he needed 30 seconds to state facts. Razdan stated that just because Patra was being questioned he had no right to accuse NDTV of having an agenda.
Five days later, on June 7, CBI raided the home of NDTV co-founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, a step which was widely interpreted as the direct result of the dismissal of Patra by the news channel's anchor Razdan from her show.
While Melbourne, Patra gave a half-hour speech on the “achievements” of the three years of Modi government in a program organized by the Overseas Friends of BJP (OFBJP) Australia at the Thornbury Theatre, where the SAT correspondent met him.
Addressing the gathering on the ‘ABCD of achievements’, Patra described demonetization as a step which, he claimed, “touched every section of Indian society” by seeking to “weed out unaccounted money in the country.” According to SAT, Patra also “detailed other Modi government programmes of rural electrification, girls’ education, ease of doing business, infrastructure development, among others.”
Patra claimed that India has now arrived on the global scene, and taking a hardline Hindutva stance, insisted, “It is the Indian civilization based on the Vedic culture that is engulfing the world.” Patra decided to skip the scheduled question-answer session following his address.
Apart from Patra, those who addressed the gathering, which consisted mainly of NRIs, were OFBJP leaders, Australian Labour Party’s Gevin Jennings and Liberal Inga Peulich, and Indian Consul in Melbourne Manika Jain.
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