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IN LIGHTER
VEIN
MINISTER, KILLERS AND STAR
TV: STRANGE HAPPENINGS
Information & broadcasting minister Pramod
Mahajan was hauled over the coals by the Congress (I) for
a comment that he made on a talk show that was to be aired
on Star Plus. Mahajan during the course of the Vir Sanghvi-hosted
political debate blurted out that the BJP-led government knew
about the build up of Pakistani-backed intruders in Kargil
on 6 April.
The Congress (I) got to know that Mahajan had
made such a statement and immediately raised a protest that
if the government knew about the intrustions on 6 April it
should not have kept Parliament in the dark when the BJP-led
government was facing a no-confidence motion in Parliament
on 17 April. It got hold of the tapes of the show before it
was aired on Star Plus, screened it for journalists and got
piles of media coverage for Mahajan's faux-pas.
Mahajan wriggled his way out of the tight situation
by saying that he actually meant 6 May and that it was a slip
of the tongue made in the heat of the debate. He contacted
Sanghvi and told him to make a correction and announce it
during the telecast of the show. He also sent a fax to Star
TV headquartes in Hong Kong where the tapes had already reached.
When the show was aired on 22 August, a correction was issued.
In another freak incident, an accused customs
official in the 1992 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case was told
to come to a hotel for an interview for the Priya Tendulkar
show which is aired on the Star TV network. The only problem
was that the caller was fake; there was no filming of the
show, and the man was about to become a victim of underworld
vendetta. The former customs officer was leaving the venue
after waiting for an hour-and-a-half when two goons set upon
him and shot at him. Following this, he was stabbed by four
other hoodlums. At the time of writing he was battling for
his life in a Mumbai hospital.
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