New Delhi, June 1: In what can be considered to be the latest incident of a live television debate gone wrong, Nidhi Razdan, Executive editor of NDTV, threw Sambit Patra, who is the national spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out of her show over a statement he gave defaming her network. Patra, otherwise a fluent speaker and known for his eloquent ways of argument was caught off guard by Razdan when she very politely announced that she will not take any comments from him anymore after he said NDTV had an ‘agenda’ over the Kerala public bovine slaughter issue.
Razdan’s show had a panel of five people, including Patra and Congress’s Sharmistha Mukherjee, among other panelists who were discussing the recent incident where a cow was allegedly slaughtered in public by a few Kerala Congress members to protest against the ban which the BJP has been rooting for. Patra in his argument stated that NDTV had some ‘agenda’ in arguing against him in this matter. There were also claims that the network has been calling the cow an ox and hence Patra in his statement perhaps implied that NDTV was inclining towards the Congress.
But Razdan could not take this anymore, as she in this ‘agenda’ implication of Patra saw her network being defamed and hence asked him to leave the show, very politely. Firstly, she asked Patra to take back his words, to which he denied to do any such thing and then Razdan went ahead and said, “You are welcome to leave the show.” Used to having an upper hand in other channels, Patra for a moment fumbled and said he will not leave the show, and kept putting his point. The other panelists were stuck in an awkward situation, while a couple of them could not stop smiling.
Following this Razdan stated that just because he was being questioned he had no right to accuse NDTV of having an agenda. She further told him that he was more than welcome to go to the channels which are ‘glorified versions of Doordarshan’. Doordarshan is the public broadcasting channel of India, by the way.
Clearly, the BJP spokesperson never had imagined that even he can be thrown out of a show. Following this, noted journalists took to Twitter to comment on the issue.
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