By Khushboo Khan, Muslimmirror.com
New Delhi: Being the fourth pillar of democracy the media industry is in high demand to promote the Hindutva agenda in order to maintain the supremacy of one party. Whole gamut burst in an investigation done by the Cobrapost with the second part of its “Operation 136” earlier in part- I they exposed the e-payment brand Paytm.
According to the sting oppression done by Cobrapost, the Giant Indian Media houses allegedly agreed to run the political campaign of Nagpur Based Hindu right-wing group and BJP.
Basically, that campaign aims to promote the Hindutva agenda and to demean the image of opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav by depicting them as Pappu, Bua and Babua.
In their Operation 136 – II part, the undercover reporter Pushp Sharma turns towards the famous media houses including the Times group, India Today, Network 18, Dainik Jagaran, Zee group, HT media etc, and approached their core representatives.
The undercover reporter met with the Times Group owner & managing director Vineet Jain and the executive president Sanjeev Shah in Mumbai. During the conversation, both officials are seen and heard discussing the proposed deal with the undercover reporter Pushp Sharma posed as Acharya Atal Pal who asked them to promote the Hindutva agenda through the advertorials and events based upon the Bhagwad Gita and Lord Krishna that would automatically stir the sentiments of Hindus.
In exchange the undercover reporter lures them to pay 500 crores, hence they accepted his offer. In the video, Vineet Jain has been also recorded while discussing the transactional ways to turn black money into the white.
The next big name with whom the Pushp Sharma interacted is the vice chairperson of India Today group, Mrs Kalli Puri. Sharma asked her to promote the name of Lord Krishna and Bhagavad Gita on their media space so that the Hindutva agenda would be propagated successfully. Sharma further told her about translating the campaign for his “political gains”.
Earlier, she felt some hesitation while accepting the proposal but later agreed and also mentions, “If you will do some infield activities that we don’t agree with editorially, we will criticize you”.
Before interacting with the Kallie Purie the undercover reporter met with Rahul Kumar Shaw, Chief Revenue Officer of the TV Today Group who allegedly agreed to run the advertisement campaign of Hindutva in exchange for a sum of Rs 275 crore. It was Shaw who agreed to take Sharma’ three-phased proposal forward to the Vice-Chairperson Kalli Purie.
Basically, the three-phase proposal includes:
1. The first phase of campaign required the organizational space to promote Lord Krishna and Bhagwad Gita in order to stir the “Hindutva vibes“.
2. The Second phase included the appropriate content to target the Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav through jingles.
3. And, the Third phase includes the requirement of 2019 general elections.
In another video by Cobrapost’s reporter Pushp Sharma interacted with Rajesh Mahasha, an Advertisement Manager in charge of Jagran Group in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. Sharma asked Mahasha to dilute the negative stories like BJP President Amit Shah and his son Jay Shah from Dainik Jagaran in exchange for a handsome amount of money. On that Mahasha responds that their editorial stand is always in support of the BJP, as well he also mentioned about the weekly column written by the Editor-in-Chief of Jagran Manoj Gupta who usually tries to highlight the work done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Earlier, in their first part of ‘Operation 136’ released in March, the Cobrapost exposed 17 media organisations including some big names; including with India TV, Hindi newspaper Dainik Jagran, Amar Ujala, DNA(Daily News and Analysis), UNI (news agency), Punjab Kesari as well the web portals Rediff.com and ScoopWhoop.