Just a few days after being released from Tihar jail on bail, P Chidambaram decided to write for various media houses including The Indian Express. The court has given bail to Chidambaram on the condition that he will not make a public statement, but, he held a press conference, and wrote on editorial pages of the various newspapers.
“Beginning today, I have resumed my column ‘Across the Aisle’ in the Indian Express and in 10 Indian languages,” tweeted Chidambaram.
Beginning today, I have resumed my column 'Across the Aisle' in the Indian Express and in 10 Indian languages.
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) December 8, 2019
The newspapers have given space to a person who is convicted in various corruption cases and spent more than three months in jail; this tells us about the sad state of Indian media.
The left-liberal media establishment collaborates with the opposition, mainly Congress which has nurtured and nourished it since the days of state monopoly over media, and spreads ruckus. The state monopoly over media ended in last the few decades but the subservience of left-liberal media to Congress remains the same. The people in the media still pursue fear and rumor-mongering on the direction of their political masters.
P Chidambaram is among the most corrupt in the country. ED has already attached the family’s properties worth 54 crore rupees in Delhi, Ooty, Chennai, London and Spain in INX Media case.
P Chidambaram is the first finance minister of India to face probe in financial irregularity by any investigation agencies. He certainly comes across as a disgrace to the sanctity to the post of finance minister. There could not be anything worse than a country’s finance minister to be involved in a finance-related crime. He is also involved in many other illegalities including changing the affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan encounter, creating the myth of saffron terror, Aircel Maxis scam and 2G scam.
When the Supreme Court denied bail to former finance minister P Chidambaram in INX Media case, several media outlets pointed out that it was copy paste judgment from an unrelated case. The Indian Express, The Hindu, and several digital media outlets including ThePrint and The Wire had reported that the court’s order denying bail to P Chidambaram, resembled Supreme Court’s decision on a bail plea in 2017 Rohit Tandon money laundering case, to which court took a suo moto cognizance and asked newspapers to issue clarification. “There is no copy-paste as alleged” said the court.
Previously, N Ram, Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Limited and Publisher of ‘The Hindu’, has declared that there is “no evidence” against his old time friend- P Chidambaram. In a meeting of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC), organized to condemn the arrest of Chidambaram, N Ram played the role of investigation officer as well as judge. He said that a “monstrous injustice” has been done against P Chidambaram.
P Chidambaram is a longtime friend of N Ram and both were co-founders of socialist journal Radical Review in 1969. P Chidambaram and N Ram were born in Tamil Nadu in 1945 and have known each other since school and were college friends. Both studied at Loyola College, Chennai and Presidency College, Chennai. N Ram also claimed to introduce Chidambaram to Communist stalwart Prakash Karat in Madras in 1968. It is very clear that, to N Ram, friendship matters more that the ‘journalistic ethics’.
The anti-corruption stance taken by the left-liberal media establishment remains in front of the camera. In backrooms, they behave as tax evaders, money launderers, sexual predators, sycophants and what not. This establishment is responsible for informing the public, and in creating the public good, they must shed their biases and their personal dealings. The interesting thing is they cry foul and ‘political witch hunt’ when some legal action is taken against them. The establishment pleads for freedom of the press whenever their corporate wrongdoing is exposed but it is difficult to expect objectivity from these tainted media houses.