Battle Preparedness
Parties go all-out to pick best candidate
The current Lok Sabha election is a keenly contested battle in which all political parties are trying to put up the best possible candidates in every parliamentary seat. Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav’s failed attempt to change the Moradabad candidate on the last day of filing nomination after he fell out with the jailed co-founder of his party Azam Khan drew a lot of media attention.
The Akhilesh-Azam brinkmanship had all the makings of a potboiler. Akhilesh travelling to jail to meet the veteran leader; Azam putting tough conditions for lending support to Samajwadi candidates and then both reportedly going back on their promises. As a result, Akhilesh got stuck with a candidate he didn’t want in Moradabad and Azam didn’t get the candidate he wanted in his stronghold – Rampur. It was quite a thriller. But who can beat Lalu Yadav when it comes to delivering an interesting story.
Lalu’s search for the right candidate for the Munger Lok Sabha constituency against former president of the Janata Dal (United) and Nitish Kumar’s confidant Rajiv Ranjan aka Lalan Singh led him to local strongman Ashok Mahto. But there was a problem. Mahto had walked out of jail after seventeen years only a year back while the law puts a six-year bar on persons convicted for over two years in criminal cases.
Lalu found a novel solution to a seemingly difficult impasse. A decision was taken to help Mahto, who was a bachelor, find a bride and then give his wife the Lok Sabha ticket from Munger. A hunt was launched for a suitable girl for Mahto and he married Anita Kumari. Anita will now take on Lalan.
Media Matters
Govt may look into BBC’s new partnership
The BBC has outsourced its entire business of generating news content in six Indian languages to a newly created entity – Collective Newsroom. The BBC top brass is flying down from London for the formal launch of the new entity on April 12 in Delhi. The Collective Newsroom’s owners and employees are all BBC staff who are now part of the new company. The four founders of the Collective Newsroom are Rupa Jha, who was the editor of languages till the day the new entity was formed, Sara Hassan, a general manager at the BBC, Sanjoy Majumder, managing editor of the BBC and Mukesh Sharma, digital editor of the BBC.
Two hundred employees of the BBC have now shifted to the new company. The Collective Newsroom is practically the BBC with a new name and management. The BBC will pay Collective Newsroom a fee for news gathering (salaries of journalists and support staff) and operational expenses (office rentals and other overheads) which will be equal to what the British company was spending on these heads when it directly controlled these operations.
The only difference is that Collective Newsroom is a hundred per cent Indian-owned company, while the BBC was a foreign company. The Collective Newsroom was formed as a recent change in the FDI laws barred foreign entities from owning more than 26% of Indian digital news companies. The BBC, UK owned almost 100% of the company managing its India operations. The BBC’s UK arm has now applied for a 26% stake in Collective Newsroom. Government sources said the tax authorities will look into the beneficial ownership and the structure of the new entity before acceding to the BBC request for equity acquisition.
Shahid Faridi
The writer is Resident Editor, TNIE, New Delhi.
Follow him on X @Shahid_Faridi