The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) patted itself on the back on Sunday after the dramatic courting of arrest by 52 of its MLAs in the heart of New Delhi was more talked about on social media than Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’.
In fact, several prominent party and government figures had no qualms about congratulating each other for drowning out mentions of Mr. Modi’s radio address on Twitter.
After #Brexit, #ArrestMeModi — this began trending in sync with the detention of 52 AAP MLAs including Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia earlier during the day — continued to lead national trends on Twitter at second place, way ahead of #MannKiBaat.
“#ArrestMeModi got double the tweets that #MannKiBaat got. This would have affected any PM but Modi ji is displaying Nero-like aloofness” tweeted Ashish Talwar, political advisor to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The hashtag garnered well over 67,000 mentions on the microblogging site.
The Delhi Police’s desperation to send out the message that they were fair in their probe of NDMC official M.M. Khan’s murder was evident from the ‘special’ treatment meted out to journalists last Thursday. The snacks served to them before the press briefing on the controversial issue had a few added delicacies.
Generally, reporters at a police press conference are served a samosa, a dhokhla, a sweetmeat, some chips and tea. Thursday’s menu, however, had an extra sweet dish and canned soft drinks. To top it all, the police ensured that no reporter left without eating.
But, given how the murder controversy has snowballed, it appeared that mere ‘special’ snacks would not settle it. So, despite a DCP-level officer already having briefed the media, another briefing on the issue was held a few hours later by a special CP-level officer.
Last week, a section of the media had reported that the BSES was almost about to lose its licence for supplying power to consumers in Delhi. The basis of the story was a purported letter by the Delhi government to the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) where it recommended “cancellation of the licenses of BRPL and BYPL discoms”. In fact, one of the leading English dailies had carried the story on the front page.
A puzzled DERC chief had then called up the topmost official of the Power Department to find out what’s going on. But when The Hindu dug deeper, it turned out that the so-called letter never existed.
Senior government officials have questioned the media reports and categorically denied having written any such letter.
The power regulator, too, said it never received any such letter.
(Contributed by Jatin Anand, Shiv Sunny, Sweta Goswami)
