New Delhi: About two years after the New York Times row, Arvind Kejriwal is at the centre of allegations again that he paid for a favourable article published by ABP News.
The headline of the article in Hindi reads: AAP सरकार की योजनाओं से दिल्ली के हर व्यक्ति को हुआ औसतन 30 लाख का फायदा और ये जुमला नहीं है!
In English, it translates to: Due to the schemes of the AAP government, every person in Delhi has benefited by an average of Rs 30 lakh and this is not a mere slogan!
The article, which has since been removed from the platform, was shared on X by Kejriwal on Thursday.
Kejriwal's X post garnered over 45,000 impressions, 471 retweets, 189 comments and 781 likes by the time of filing of this report and remains live even after the article was deleted by the publisher.
Realising that the article was deleted by the publisher, Kejriwal shared the screenshots of the article.
The second push turned out to be counterproductive as the write-up was found to be misleading as well.
While the headline talks about everyone being benefited by Rs 30 lakh, the article concludes by saying 30 lakh people benefited (from Delhi govt schemes).
On the face of it, Kejriwal seemed to be aware of the misleading headline as it was omitted in the screenshots shared by him. Yet, the AAP supremo hinted it was deleted under the pressure from BJP.
As the article claimed that the AAP government had delivered an astronomical financial benefit to every resident of Delhi, journalist Ajeet Bharti and others found the claim mathematically implausible.
Sharing the screenshot of the Google search page in a post on X, Bharti argued that the article was marked as “paid” by the internet giant.
Bharti explained that Delhi has a population of three crores with an average budget of Rs 60,000 crore.
Stressing that the total budget for ten years will be Rs six lakh crore, Bharti wondered what mathematics was applied by the writer to achieve a profit of Rs 90 lakh crore.
According to Bharti, the senior journalist Harishankar Joshi wrote an 'opinion' and not an interview where he can get away by saying he only quoted someone.
“Media slots, journalists are sold, this is general knowledge, but journalists should know basic maths so that they don't get caught!” remarked Bharti.
To refresh readers’ memory, this situation echoes an earlier incident involving the New York Times, where similar allegations were made regarding paid coverage of Delhi schools' quality under AAP's governance.
Recently, social media users accused Kejriwal of stage-managing an interview with Sandeep Chaudhary of ABP News in which he was allegedly allowed to shoot and scoot.
The deletion of the article by ABP News indicates that the media house is concerned about its image and reputation over its earnings.
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