Kailash Vijayvargiya, general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, briefly became a reporter for ABP News, commenting on his party’s campaign rally at Kolkata’s Brigade Ground on Sunday. The rally was addressed by prime minister Narendra Modi.

ABP News correspondent Vikas Baduria invited Vijayvargiya to report on the rally for his channel, and the BJP leader promptly accepted and gave a rundown of the event to Romana Khan, the anchor back in the studio.

Vijayvargiya’s excitement at being asked to report on his party’s campaign event for a leading TV news channel was palpable. He claimed his party was going to bring change to Bengal and that the presence of a “sea of people” at the Brigade Ground was testament to that.

The politician’s reporting stint got Twitter abuzz, eliciting diverse reactions from the Hindutva party’s supporters, critics, and other people.

Saket Gokhale, a social activist who was formerly associated with the Congress, questioned if this violated the Election Commission’s rules for media reportage during elections.

Communist leader Dipankar Bhattacharya used the video to make a reference to a contentious report prepared by a group of ministers to “neutralise” independent media. Former NDTV and Tehelka journalist Nitin Gokhale is quoted in the report as suggesting that journalists should be colour-coded based on whether they support the incumbent government.

Former diplomat KC Singh called it a “shocking abdication of a reporter’s function”. He asked whether this was the price ABP News had to pay “for showing the Trinamool Congress’s previous victories in Bengal”.

BJP members, meanwhile, applauded Vijayvargiya. Vijaya Rahatkar, the national president of the BJP Mahila Morcha, called the fellow party leader the “Chanakya of Bengal BJP”.

MP Hariom Pandey, legislator Dinesh Chaudhary, and former convenor of the party’s IT Cell in Bihar, Manish Kumar Pandey, praised their fellow parttman as well. They used the hashtag #ModisatheBrigade in their tweets.

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