“In a national scenario like this Arvind Kejriwal and his party does not fit into the scheme of things. His decision to jump into the fray in the national election might pose a serious threat to BJP. His lofty ideas about governance by the masses are neither understandable nor backed by history. His idea of fighting elections does not seem to be providing good governance, but to derail the system first. And then he thinks a new system would evolve. He is clever enough to play the emotional card to get the people’s support.” 

This is an extract from the article “Kejriwal on course to ruin 2014 for BJP” which was published in the Op-Ed pages of Mail Today on December 13, 2013. The lead article carried the byline of Shanti Bhushan and the descriptor stated that he was a former law minister, former member of the (Bharatiya Janata Party) BJP and the founding member of the (Aam Aadmi Party) AAP.

One can understand why Mail Today would have wanted to publish the article, that too on their Op-Ed page. AAP is at the height of its glory and catching every headline. To be the beneficiary of this vitriolic article taking down Arvind Kejriwal, written by a member of AAP and its co-founder – is nothing short of a coup. As it was published, most channels picked it up and flashed quotes from the article on their tickers.

It really seemed as if Mail Today had landed the article of the year. But the smooth run was not to last for long. Because close on the heels of the publication of the article, came a denial from Shanti Bhushan that he had not written the article.

In an Indian Express report he was quoted as saying, “Any such article has not been written by me and is a piece of fabrication. I am going to sue Mail Today and all such newspapers and TV channels that reproduce the same”.

After the denial came the apology from Mail Today’s editor Sandeep Bamzai. At 2:55 pm Bamzai tweeted:

By 4:30 pm he had figured out that Mail Today has been “duped” by some “miscreants” and said that he would lodge an FIR against them.

At 7:17pm, Rohan Venkat, an editor at Mail Today tweeted a statement on the entire fiasco.

While the many apologies were popping up on Twitter, the article was still available online on the Daily Mail site as late as 7.30pm.

Mail Today might not have had any intention of tarnishing Bhushan’s image, but what is intriguing and quite worrying is how an article is published in the Editorial pages of a mainline newspaper without cross-checking the authenticity of the writer. Bhushan has said that the newspaper “never contacted me to write an editorial”.

When unsolicited articles are received by the Editorial department, the person – whosoever it may be – is asked for a contact number. The person is then spoken to on the telephone. This is standard practice, nothing out of the normal and isn’t even done to verify the author, but simply to contact the person before publishing their article. Keeping in mind the explosive nature of this article, it is odd that Mail Today did not try and contact Shanti Bhushan before publishing this article.