Front Page
It’s voting day in the second phase of Lok Sabha elections and The Times of India calls it the ‘fight’ for the ‘biggest slice of southern pie’ as all of Tamil Nadu’s 39 seat, and 14 of Karnataka’s 28, vote Thursday.
Jet Airways also makes unhappy reading on Page 1 for the third time this week after it was ‘Grounded’ (The Economic Times, Business Standard). ET and BS highlight the developments leading up to the shutdown, while Hindustan Times says the temporary suspension is “closing the curtain on one chapter in the history of the carrier”. “If the process of inducting a new investor fails, it will mark the end of the airline,” HT adds, dispassionately (‘Jet halts operations after emergency funds rejected’).
TOI and The Indian Express concentrate on the loss of jobs.
In ‘16,500 jobs up in the air, Jet grounded’, Express says the move “has rendered around 16,500 plus employees including hundreds of pilots, who were not being paid salaries for several months, virtually jobless”. TOI offers a higher figure in ‘22,000 employees stare at bleak future as Jet flies into the night’. It waxes dramatic: “After raging against the dying of the light for several months, Jet Airways flew gently into the night on Wednesday— at least for now.”
Pragya vs Digvijaya
Express leads with the battle for Bhopal, others give it mere column space – or less. ‘Accused in Malegaon terror blast case, Sadhavi Pragya Thakur is BJP’s candidate,’ reads Express headline. It says the choice is an example of “placing Hindutva on the front burner for the Lok Sabha polls”.
“A Hindu hardliner, she has been fielded against Singh, who the BJP calls a Hindu-baiter. This sets the stage for a highly polarising battle in Bhopal,” it writes.
TOI quotes Pragya: “After spending 10 years in jail due to Congress conspiracy, I have come here to fight a political and religious war.”
Rahul Gandhi interview
The Hindu’s exclusive interview with Congress president Rahul Gandhi, ‘Unemployment is the real national security issue: Rahul’, runs into the paper’s inside pages. It follows many TV and print interviews with PM Modi over the past week.
Several questions to Rahul are framed around the ruling party — “Does the BJP want to corner the Congress on issues of nationalism?”, “Coming to NYAY….will it click with voters? The BJP calls it an election gimmick…?”, and “Where does the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi go from here if Mr Modi wins the 2019 election?”
Gandhi’s repeated mantra is that “Mr Narendra Modi will be rejected by the people and will not form the next government”.
“We are fighting for India’s youth, its farmers, its small traders and businessmen, its women, its deprived sections and its poor. We are not only in opposition to Mr Modi, but this is a fight for the very idea of India,” he said. The interview also covered unemployment, Rafale, and Priyanka Gandhi’s possible electoral debut.
Killer squall
A thunderstorm killed people, Wednesday – TOI, HT and Hindu lead with scenic shots of the storm in Delhi while Express banishes the news to Page 9 – it’s the lead in HT.
TOI says the storm claimed “the lives of at least 59 people, a majority of them in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh” while Hindu and Express claim 50 dead.
Opinion
The Indian Express, alone, comments on Sadhvi Pragya’s electoral debut in Bhopal.
In ‘Who Cares’, it says the “unequivocal signal” from the BJP is that “legal due process” loses out to “furthering politics and ideology”. That Pragya, out on bail, is still an accused in 2008 Malegaon terror case doesn’t bother the party, it writes. Her candidature is also a “comeuppance” for Congress candidate Digvijaya Singh, who has “lent his political weight” to a number of conspiracy theories regarding the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
Express says Pragya may defeat Singh but her nomination “corrodes democracy” and ignores the rule of law for the court of the people.
Hindustan Times says it’s ‘Time to rein in the tax authorities’. It gives three possible explanations for the recent I-T raids and “action from investigative agencies” on opposition parties that have spared the BJP and its allies.
One, the authorities are doing their job, two, some officers are trying to “curry favour” with the ruling dispensation, three, the current government is acting against its political opponents. Such “intense activity of raids and probes” is unprecedented in a campaign season and only further erodes “the credibility of the tax department and the agencies”, HT writes. It asks the EC to “act” in carefully monitoring both.
Prime Time
New channels were all aflutter on Wednesday over Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. However, the grounding of Jet Airways received some sober reflection on the business and economic channels.
Aaj Tak anchor Rohit Sardana asked if the poll narrative would change to “Hindu terrorism” with Pragya’s candidature.
“There is nothing such as Hindu terrorism per se, this is just an agenda set up by the Congress party,” replied BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli, articulating the party line on the issue.
“They are going to talk about terrorism, Pakistan, everything under the sun except for development,” retorted Congress leader Radhika Khera.
Actor Vivek Oberoi, who stars in an upcoming biopic of PM Modi that has been stalled by the EC, was also on the show. “I don’t believe in Hindu terrorism, terrorism does not have any religion,” he said.
India Today: BJP spokesperson Shazia Ilmi went much further in her defence of Sadhvi Pragya: “Sadhvi Pragya is a saint and a nationalist,” she boasted, “She has every right to take part in elections.”
Political commentator Syed Abbas was appalled: “This is the first time I see a spokesperson of a national party calling a terrorist a nationalist. My god!”
Congress spokesperson Ajit Jha compared Pragya and Digvijaya Singh: The latter may have said “Osama ji”, or coined the term “saffron terror”, but there was “not a single terror charge against him”, Jha argued.
CNN News 18: Anchor Zakka Jacob asked a simple question: Was the BJP unable to find anyone other than Sadhvi Pragya to field from Bhopal?
BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli was once again in the saddle: “You may like Sadhvi Pragya or you may hate her, that is the beauty of democracy,” he said, adding that no terror charge had been proved against her.
Activist Tehseen Poonawalla responded: “In Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed contested elections and the people of Pakistan rejected him and I am sure people of India will reject her.”
Times Now: Anchor Rahul Shivshankar interviewed BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Sadhvi Pragya and brought up the terror case against her.
“It is a bogus case against Sadhvi Pragya. There were terror cases made against Jaiprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai during the Emergency, but it was all false,” Swamy argued.
Would he, then, be OK if the PDP gave a ticket to a terror accused in Jammu & Kashmir, Shivshankar asked.
“No, absolutely not, it is a different case,” said Swamy.
.@NikunjGargN shares details with @RShivshankar as #PragyaJoinsBJP. pic.twitter.com/7TGdNmt7n2
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) April 17, 2019
ET Now: What lay ahead for Jet Airways, asked anchor Nayantara Rai, after the carrier suspended all operations from 17 April.
Mark D. Martin of Martin Consultancy was unsure: “When you suspend the airline, you are signalling that there is nothing in the airline to run and to drive revenue.”
Who was to blame for the mess? Aerospace adviser Dhiraj Mathur pointed to Jet Airways, adding, “It is wrong to blame the bankers or the government. They were not the ones running the airline.”
Tweet of the day
Fact: Charges have been framed against Sadhvi Pragya in Malegaon 2008 blast case , trial is on and she is yet to be acquitted by the court.. And she is the BJP candidate from the great city of Bhopal: what does one say but welcome to a ‘new’ India.. ?#IndiaElects
— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) April 17, 2019
With inputs from Shailaja Bajpai.