Author: Mrityunjay Kumar
Publication: Niticentral.com
Date: August 10, 2013
URL: http://www.niticentral.com/2013/08/10/tois-malicious-anti-gujarat-campaign-116836.html\

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has emerged as a youth icon and the credit for this goes to Gujarat’s success story that his Government has chronicled during the past decade. Unfortunately, a section of the media insists on depicting him unfairly as a leader who is against Muslims.

In a fresh malicious campaign against the Gujarat Chief Minister, a report has been published in the Times of India that a mall in Ahmedabad charged an entry fee for Muslims  on the occasion of Eid. But reality has turned out to be contrary to the prejudiced report.

The Ahmedabad mall in fact, charged an entry fee from all adult men visitors irrespective of their religious identity while women and children were exempted from the same. The purpose seems to have been to keep the number of visitors there within limits so that unnecessary crowds would not hamper the festive mood. It is worth mentioning that the mall staff had actually installed a board at the entry saying that the fee will be reimbursed at the time of the exit of a visitor. In fact Deepa Bhatnagar, manager (operations) of Himalaya Mall, had told TOI that it was a routine move to check visitors on a busy day. “We had employed the same mechanism in the past to keep troublemakers out. We are planning to charge entry fee during the coming festive season including Diwali. The fee is being returned if any purchase is made, so the entry is practically free,” she said. While the report had carried this information, yet it made sure that normal life in Gujarat is viewed through the jaundiced eyes of an anti-Modi media. In fact, something as irresponsible as this ToI report may even have triggered communal violence.

Moreover, the same media houses ignore to highlight the glaring administrative deficiencies of the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre. They hardly take notice of the way honest officers like Ashok Khemka are being harassed in Congress-ruled Haryana. Going by Government reports, Khemka has been transferred without any concrete reason over 40 times during the last two decades. Most of the transfers took place during the Congress regime in the State.

Khemka is the same officer who had highlighted the illegal deals between real estate giant DLF and Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Officers like Khemka have always paid the price for sticking to the path of honesty while discharging their duties. It is ironic that the mainstream media houses which have been running a defamatory and unethical campaign against the Gujarat Administration, don’t care to raise the issue of rampant corruption by the Congress-led Governments, at the Centre or in States.