New Delhi: Coronavirus made a comeback on prime time news, albeit only on India Today. Most of the news channels, were preoccupied with the death of an elephant in Kerala, which snowballed into a political blame-game.
News Nation and Times Now focused their energies on the chargesheet filed by the Delhi Crime Branch in the Northeast Delhi riots, and claiming victory over their naysayers.
On Aaj Tak, Anjana Om Kashyap discussed the death of an elephant in the Palakkad district of Kerala, which swiftly spiralled into a political blame-game.
The question of the hour was — ‘Did a female elephant die in Kerala or humanity?’
The show featured clips of the elephant standing in the water after it had been fatally injured by a firecracker, and animated visuals of men inserting crackers inside pineapples which the elephant ended up eating, as anchor Anjana Om Kashyap narrated the horrific incident with her usual dramatic pauses.
Guess the news that the elephant had actually not eaten a pineapple has not reached Aaj Tak.
Clips of BJP leader Maneka Gandhi slamming Rahul Gandhi, an MP from Kerala, for his silence were also played, where she addresses the elephant as “meri behen, meri beti” (My sister, my daughter). However, in her response, not only did Gandhi get the district wrong, Wayanad, which is Rahul’s constituency, is more than a 100 km away from Palakkad.
Things soon turned heated in the debate between BJP’s Sudhanshu Trivedi and Congress’ Supriya Shrinate, after she questioned Prakash Javadekar’s error of calling the place of the incident Malappuram, a Muslim majority area.
ABP News also focused on the elephant’s death. Rubika Liyaquat began the show with her personal experience as a mother — “I am a woman, a mother – I know how the pregnancy period feels like. Hence a woman, a mother can understand this better.”
BJP leader Babul Supriyo also questioned Rahul Gandhi over the death of the elephant. The debate then ended up becoming about Gandhi’s “silence” over the issue since he was the MP of Wayanad.
There were several tense moments in the debate, including when Liyaquat went after CPI leader Amir Haider Zaidi all guns blazing. Zaidi had asked where all this “humanity” was when the migrant workers were dying.
On News Nation, Deepak Chaurasia conducted a Q & A session with BJP’s Kapil Mishra over his role in the Northeast Delhi riots.
Chaurasia also brought in his narrative of Shaheen Bagh — “’Everybody could see what was happening in India,” the anchor said while talking about the protests in Shaheen Bagh
However, Mishra soon lost his cool after Chaurasia asked him for his comments on allegations that he had collected riot weapons. The allegations were made by AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi.
“Owaisi is like a rat hiding in one of Hyderabad’s lanes, inside a small hole. He sends his videos shooting from inside the hole everyday. He has no “aukaat.” (stature), said Mishra, rather nastily.
And finally, someone went back to coronavirus.
India Today anchor Rajdeep Sardesai spoke about “India’s biggest Covid hotspot” — Mumbai. Sardesai said, “Now the Government of Maharashtra has decided to act against Private hospitals. Today, notices were issued to 4 hospitals for not allocating the mandated beds for Covid patients. Are the private hospitals failing to stand up and deliver at this critical juncture in the Covid fight?”
India Today correspondent Tanushree Pande revealed that most private hospitals in Mumbai were operating at just 20 per cent to 40 per cent capacity. Even though private hospitals had been asked to provide 3,500 beds for Covid patients, only 1,500 beds had been set aside so far.
Times Now’s Navika Kumar demanded an apology from “Hinduphobics”.
Kumar said, in a rather delighted tone, “Today, the Delhi Police has left the entire Lutyens lobby red-faced. Ever since the crackdown on Delhi riots took place, this lobby has been trying to parrot a narrative that the action was being taken against only one community and the minority communities are being demonised without proof.”
She argued that the Delhi police charging 20 Hindus for the murder of 4 Muslims during the North-east Delhi riots has “punctured the lies” of the “Lutyens Lobby”.
She asked her panel, “Is this not justice? Is this not a fair investigation?” Is she asking or telling us?
G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, BJP’s spokesperson, was also part of this rather esteemed panel. Among arguments about a certain minority community feeling persecuted, Rao asserted, “I don’t think that in this part of the world, you can get a better democracy than India.”
Rao continued, “You can’t get a fairer justice system than India. But these people who come out everyday on TV and social media want barbaric Muslim rule in India.”
Other panel members made loud disagreements, but he shouted to assert, “India will never become Pakistan!!” Okay, then.
CNBC-TV 18’s Shireen Bhan spoke about the mobile app advertising boom, “An internet boom and easy access to smartphones has ensured that Indians are consuming content on their phones like never before. Mobile is the backbone of online advertising and mobile apps is where the bulk of action takes place for both the user and the advertiser.”
She added, “And with most locked in at home due to the coronavirus crisis, the usage has surged. According to advertising tech platform InMobi, the first quarter mobile apps were targeted at shoppers grew 28% while music, health, fitness and educating related ads saw a whopping 500% growth in India marking the immense growth potential that the space has to offer to brands.”
Just a small question.
Is killing of elephant horrific but not the same of Hens, Cows, Pigs etc?
Why has this been the headline?
Those farmers did this to protect their farm just like we use mosquito bats to kill the mosquitoes even the harmless one in night. Does this mean the shorter the size, that less is its value?