The controversy surrounding the telecast of the “edited” interview of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Doordarshan continued unabated on Friday. The BJP demanded a probe to find out under whose pressure the contents of Modi’s interview were edited even as Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political aide Ahmed Patel refuted the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate’s claims of “friendship” between them, saying he would quit public life if they were proved.
The BJP alleged that it was due to Government “pressure” and censorship, an allegation which Prasar Bharati denied saying there was no interference by any authority or any “deliberate omission”. Interestingly, Prasar Bharati distanced itself from the row saying it was completely left to the editorial team of DD News to go ahead and telecast it. BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said: “A probe must be ordered to find out under whose pressure the contents of the interview were edited.”
Addressing a Press conference in Varanasi, he even pointed out that Modi had never said that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was like his daughter and that the interview aired by DD News was deliberately “distorted”. The BJP, in the meantime, also released the unedited interview which it recorded simultaneously with DD. The unedited version shows Modi saying that he does not take Priyanka’s attack on him seriously as any daughter or sister will do anything to ensure the victory of her mother and brother.
“A daughter is a daughter after all. If she does not do it for her mother and brother, for whom will she do itIJ” he said. “And I will never mind whatever she says being a daughter.... Even if she hurls ten more abuses, a daughter is a daughter and we cannot be angry with her,” Modi had said. later, Priyanka had contemptuously dismissed Modi’s comments saying she did not “appreciate” this comparison with her father. “I am Rajiv Gandhi’s daughter,” was her terse reply.
For his part, Patel termed Modi’s remark on their friendship a “political stunt to create confusion and a cloud of doubt in the midst of elections”. “How can Modi be friends with me when he has never been able to strike a friendship within his own partyIJ” Patel asked.Patel termed Modi’s assertions of closeness between them as “baseless” and “a complete lie”. “If he proves that I ever visited his house or his office or have taken any favour, I will quit public life,” he asserted.
However, Patel said that Modi did come to his place for lunch when he was BJP general secretary in the 1980s. “Besides that I never had any one-on-one meeting with Modi before or after the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002,” he clarified.Defending the public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati CEO Sircar said he was told by DD News on April 27 afternoon, the day after the interview was done, that his team was on the job and that it would be telecast soon. “But many of us felt that the subject was too current to hold on to and further delays could only cause unnecessary controversies,” he said.
Acknowledging that certain comments on personalities were apparently edited, the public broadcaster, which supervises the functioning of Doordarshan said, a free hand was given even though there were concerns that a “balancing interview” from the other side could not be procured despite the best attempts of DD News.
Interestingly, Sircar wrote to members of the Prasar Bharati Board informing them about the circumstances surrounding the interview “as I see them”. “I gave them the strength and it appears that while portions critical of Doordarshan were telecast, certain comments on other personalities were apparently edited,” he said enclosing a statement issued by DD News on the issue last night.