Things are not going well for left liberal journalist Punya Prasun Bajpai. As per confirmed media reports, the journalist seems to be out of a job again. Surya Samachar, the news agency, where Punya Prasun and 25 other journalists had arrived after quitting ABP News, has issued a notice, informing them that they shall be laid off within a month.
To quote the ‘Disassociation Notice’, as issued by Surya Samachar, “As per the decision of the management we notify you that your services have been disassociated with the company. Please consider 31st March 2019, as your last working day. All your payments will be cleared after obtaining dues clearance.”
According to Newslaundry, who reported about the recent development, Punya Prasun Bajpai, who had joined Surya Samachar as the editor, has promised to leave by 31st March, provided that the salaries of all the concerned journalists are cleared without any hassles. As of now, he has refused to comment anymore on this issue.
For those unaware, Punya Prasun Bajpai is a veteran journalist who has worked with several news agencies, be it Aaj Tak, or Jansatta, or Lokmat, or even NDTV. He was one of the known anchors of Aaj Tak before having quit the channel to join ABP News. He has been criticized for his one sided coverage of news, which included his doctored interview with the incumbent CM of Delhi NCR, Arvind Kejriwal, which was consequently leaked, much to the chagrin of them both.
Punya Prasun’s antics didn’t stop even after he quit Aaj Tak. ‘Masterstroke’, which was the show he ran on ABP News, was actually a propaganda machine which only spewed blind hatred for PM Modi. A couple of months ago, in July 2018, when PM Modi talked about how the government schemes for farmers had almost doubled their income, a news channel had confirmed the same with a lady farmer from Chattisgarh, Chandramani Kaushik.
Punya Prasun however, smelt fake news and did an entire episode on how she was prepared to praise the scheme for the television broadcast. It later turned out that in his enthusiasm to malign PM Modi, the ‘Masterstroke’ forgot to see that Chandramani had talked about the doubling of her income with respect to her pumpkin crop, and not the rice crop as Punya Prasun claimed.
Following an uproar over the expose, Punya Prasun was compelled to resign from ABP News. It looks like even Surya Samachar got a whiff of what the journalist actually was and evicted him before he could bring a bad name to them.