BJP MP and senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani claimed that the BBC needed money "desperately" and was taking it from Chinese-affiliated Huawei.
New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP and senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani claimed that the BBC needed money “desperately” and was taking it from Chinese-affiliated Huawei. The claim by the Rajya Sabha MP surfaced in the midst of an ongoing controversy over the Narendra Modi BBC documentary.
The BJP MP posted a link to a story from the UK publication The Spectator dated August 2022 that claimed the BBC was receiving money from Huawei.
BJP leader Amit Malviya asserted in an interview that the documentary was being used to “torpedo India’s growth story.”
It is a well-known truth that a number of Chinese enterprises supported by their government do business with the BBC and have financially supported it in recent years.
“The Supreme Court has cleared PM Modi,” he added. We can’t have foreign media agencies dictate to India what its public discourse should be. That sort of intervention is not acceptable.
In the meantime, the Congress MP Karti Chidambaram referred to the government’s approach to the BBC documentary by banning it as “childish.”
“I believe if the BJP MP has credible information that Chinese companies are supporting BBC shows, he should go to the proper oversight authority in Britain and expose the BBC.” Karti Chidambaram remarked, “This is quite childish.”
Karti Chidambaram commented on the government’s decision to ban the BBC series, saying, “If the government believes the documentary is factually erroneous, then it must develop a counter-narrative instead of banning it.”
He added, “If they really want to talk about China, they should talk about Chinese incursions into Indian territory and the building of infrastructure on land that belongs to us.”
Since the release of the two-part BBC series “India: The Modi Question,” this has turned into a contentious issue.
The documentary made it clear that it probed certain features relating to the 2002 Gujarat riots, at which time Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat. The government has termed the series a “propaganda piece.”
