NL Hafta

In this week’s NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri is joined by Meghnad, Raman Kirpal, and Manisha Pande. The panel also features Newslaundry reporters Amit Bhardwaj and Prateek Goyal who are covering the elections from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh respectively. Amit gives us insight into the election rallies in Rajasthan that are being dominated by PM Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath instead of Vasundhara Raje. He says yes when Abhinandan asks whether a reporter gets new insight when on the ground. He adds that people would assume that the fight in the state is between the BJP and the Congress but in as many as 20 seats, the BSP dominates the other two parties. Prateek shares his experience from Madhya Pradesh. He says the people in the state would vote for the BJP despite their dissatisfaction with the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government. Moving on, the panel discusses the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition, which Right-wing groups popularly call "Shaurya Diwas". Abhinandan says that unlike countries like Germany, people fail to acknowledge the immorality of the violence that followed the events of December 6, 26 years ago. He adds that as a society, we are a couple of decades behind. Raman talks about his reporting experience during the demolition. He says, “They pulled down this decades-old structure despite Advani making a feeble attempt there, leading, trying to stop them from bringing down the structure. Whereas other leaders were happy about it. And it was an illegal act. And some people got injured and this led to riots. So how can you celebrate it?” The panel also discusses the violence in Bulandshahr where a policeman was allegedly killed by cow vigilantes. They discussed how the media covered the event, especially TV channels during primetime. Pointing out the absurdity in the investigation, Meghnad says, “The weird part of all of this is going into the specifics of which meat was it, was it on the transformer or whether it was in the fridge. But in this whole scenario, a very vital element of this is lost: that a person lost their life for a stupid reason.” Manisha remarks that all this is because of bad investigation and bad reporting. Listen up! There's more.