New Delhi: Prime time news Thursday was once again a mixed bag.
News Nation’s Deepak Chaurasia promised an “investigation” into the lynching of sadhus in Palghar while News 18 India’s anchor Amish Devgan attacked those posing questions on the government’s strategy of containing coronavirus.
“Koi madat nahi kar raha, sawaal sab puch rahe hai,” (No one is helping, everyone is just asking questions), said Devgan.
He compared India’s response with other countries like Spain, Iran, Italy and asserted that it was doing better than the others.
Devgan also explained his stance in great detail, “Sarkar koi bhi faisla dharam jaati dekh kar laagu nahi kar rahi…Corona ka jo ilaaj ho raha hai toh Jamaatiyon ka bhi ilaaj ho raha hai aur Kanika Kapoor ka bhi” (The government is not taking any decisions based on caste and creed…Everyone is getting treated for coronavirus, from people associated with Tablighi Jamaat to Kanika Kapoor).
ABP News’ Romana Isar Khan was stuck on one word, “Agar stage 3 se jaane se bachna hai toh phir testing, testing, testing.” (If India wants to protect itself from progressing to Stage 3 of coronavirus, then testing is the only solution).
She asked Dr Romel Tikoo from Max Healthcare, “Should India do anything other than testing?”
Dr Tikoo replied, “Raftaar abhi sahi hai, aage badani padegi.” (The pace is good now but we will have to increase the number of tests being conducted in the future).
“We can’t compare our case to other countries because each country has a different population size,” he added. Did you hear that, Mr Devgan?
News Nation’s Deepak Chaurasia was very confident about his “khulasa” (disclosure). He said, “News Nation ne jab tooti hui kadiya jodi, toh isse sabit hota hai ki saadhuon ko bachaya jaa sakta tha.” (When News Nation put two and two together, it was proved that the sadhus who were lynched could be saved).
“But the police didn’t save them,” Chaurasia exclaimed. He also asked some very pointed questions, “Kitne ghante tak yeh forest vibhag ke guesthouse mein drama chala,” (How long did this drama last in the Forest Department’s guesthouse).
After a lot of meandering, Chaurasia finally came to his point, “When people started hitting the sadhus, Maharashtra Police didn’t interject”.
NDTV 24×7 anchor Vishnu Som had some good news on the coronavirus front, “Clinical trials to develop a vaccine against Covid-19 have started… 510 volunteers at Oxford are being given a dose of potential vaccine”.
Som revealed, “The Oxford vaccine used chimpanzee Adenovirus vaccine vector which comes from chimpanzees.”
“There is an 80 per cent chance that it could be successful,” he told a hopeful audience.
ET Now’s Mubina Kapasi was in an interaction with Anas Alhajji, an energy market expert, regarding the recent crash in crude oil price.
Alhajji said, “We have these negative prices in the natural gas markets, but we never expected to see them in the crude market. What happened on Monday could be a once in a time event, it is a once in 500 years kind of historic event.”
News X’s anchor Rishabh Gulati was in conversation with Robin Hibu, Delhi Police Special Commissioner. Gulati asked, “I have been given to understand that you and a lot of other IAS, IPS officers are trying to band together the best resources that you can to help out people who have come from the North East.”
Hibu replied, “For Delhi, we have had an elaborate system in place since 24 March… We have a control room run by activists in Delhi where we get all the SOS messages from the North East community.”