Republic TV founder Arnab Goswami was seething with anger last week when he launched a tirade against the Congress while discussing the political crisis in Karnataka. Goswami justified the desertions of Congress MLAs to the BJP camp arguing that the turncoat legislators were exercising their wisdom to desert their respective parties. Soon his discussion took an ugly turn after Goswami called his guest from the Trinamool Congress a clown. Trinamool guest Garga Chatterjee responded by hurling a personal attack against Goswami and dragged the Republic TV founder’s late father. This was enough for Goswami to remove the guest from his show.
Starting the programme, Goswami had said, “Everybody is an adult and there’s a law. If an adult makes a choice without breaking the law. Then I want to know what’s illegal. By this logic, everybody who left the Congress to join the Trinamool Congress is a criminal because this is how Mamata formed the Trinamool Congress. She broke away from the Congress, went to the Trinamool Congress, formed a separate party, broke the Congress party.”
Then taunting Garga provocatively, Goswami said, “Tomorrow if Garga wants to join the BJP, you can’t stop him. You can’t put him in jail.”
This was followed by one of the pro-BJP guests on Republic TV to ask Garga if he would accept a Rs 100 crore offer from the BJP to leave his party. Garga requested for one minute to answer, but Goswami used the opportunity to mock him as he said, “No, no. He’s come to make a speech. He thinks he’s at the Oscars.”
Garga replied, “Will you give me one minute to answer or this theatre will go on?” Goswami continued his tirade calling his Trinamool guest a ‘joker in his own play.’ “Garga plays the role of a clown in his own play every day,” Goswami continued.
Pat came a fitting reply from Garga, who said, “But you call this clown every day because I give you TRPs. You are paying me money, I give you business. Everybody knows this.”
Soon pro-BJP guests began to speak as Garga remained a mute spectator on the show. This prompted Goswami to declare that the Trinamool representative had run out of an argument, forcing him to stay quiet. When Garga said he was waiting for his turn, Goswami poked fun at him by saying that there was point begging for time since he already had his opportunity to speak.
“I am not begging for anything from anti-Bengali chauvinist, who supports NRC, whose father was dealing with AASU (All Assam Students’ Union) in the early 80s. Garga dragging Goswami’s late father, who served in the Indian army, made the Republic TV founder very angry. Goswami called Garga an ‘uncouth person.’ Goswami said that the Trinamool guest was not ‘intellectually equipped’ to be on his programme.
“But you still pay an uncouth person to be on your show. Think about it,” Garga taunted. Goswami replied, “So you leave Garga. I am not paying you.”
Garga said that Goswami’s channel had not cleared the previous dues for several months. Goswami said that the Trinamool Congress guest should not expect any payment from his TV channel.
Last month Garga had walked out of a Republic TV debate after Goswami accused him of faking an audio problem.