Journalist Vinod Dua’s new show, imaginatively called The Vinod Dua show, got considerable flak over the weekend for misleading the audience into believing that there was some sort of a rebellion brewing within the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Dua, in his show, suggested that Union Minister of Road Transport and Highway Nitin Gadkari was attacking the party leadership for stalled projects and rising NPAs in the sector. The clip for Dua’s show was culled out of Gadkari’s interview to HW News, where the minister was, in fact, blaming the UPA government. But the UPA bit was cut out and you had Dua wax eloquent on how “resistance has started arising from within the BJP“. He said: “Till now Yashwant Sinha, Shatrughan Sinha and Arun Shourie raised their voices, but now a leader associated with the RSS is also saying that if the BJP wants to win the next elections, it can no longer just show Prime Minister Modi’s face. They cannot win based on his rallies, you have to bring forward Nitin Gadkari. Nitin Gadkari himself hinted this to our editor Akhilesh Bhargava (translated).”
(You can read a detailed piece on this on Alt News.)
While HW News issued a clarification (without an apology) yesterday and pulled the episode down, Dua in the latest episode of his show humbly apologised before stating that it was not really his fault. This is apparently because he only provides the anchor links and the video clips are added from Mumbai. But since it’s a team, he should apologise. The rest of the show is about why the government should apologise for a number of things like demonetisation, GST, black money, Ganga, farmer’s suicide, China, Maldives, Kashmir and, well, the list is long.