Tejashwi Yadav appeals to Opposition parties to stay away from debates on media, calls them shouting matches

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav has written to other leaders of the Opposition requesting them to stay away from “debates” held on television channels as they are conducted with the “sole aim of denigrating opposition parties”.

Adding that “powerful sections of the TV media” were deeply vested in the electoral fortunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Tejashwi Yadav called it “an open secret”.

In his letter dated March 8 and addressed to Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) head Mayawati, Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee among others, the RJD leader stated that the some media channels “have not only given up all pretence of impartiality in their conduct of debates on issues of national importance but have gone ahead to spout vitriolic hate.” He further pointed out that the “engagement and presence of the opposition” is used “to lend credibility” to the proceedings on these TV channels and therefore need to be boycotted.

Calling the “debates” nothing but “shouting matches”, the leader of the opposition of the Bihar Legislative Assembly noted that the “conspicuous absence of faces and voices from opposition” would stall the plans of the “funded news channels” in peddling pre-scripted narratives against the Opposition.

The difficult-to-miss “tilt” towards the BJP government at the Centre can only be countered by a “united and collective call on this”, added Tejashwi Yadav in his letter