Dubbed as the ‘poor man’s Arnab Goswami,’ News18 India’s Amish Devgan on Tuesday faced brutal trolling for his over-the-top praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the announcement of 21 days of lockdown. This came as his employer, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, announced key measures to deal with coronavirus after video with daughter-in-law Shloka Mehta went viral.
Reacting to Modi’s extraordinary announcement of an imminent lockdown across India to check the spread of coronavirus, Devgan posted a bizarre tweet that smacked of a desperate attempt at sycophancy. He wrote in Hindi, “What America, Spain, Italy and other countries could not show the courage to do, PM Narendra Modi has done that for our lives. He preferred the development of human lives over economic development. We will be alive if we stay inside our homes.”
No sooner did he share the news, it began to be widely shared particularly by supporters of Modi, known as bhakts. But th3e controversial TV anchor also faced plenty of criticism on social media for his brazen sycophancy of the Indian prime minister. A known parody account of Rahul Gandhi, Rofl Gandhi 2.0, tweeted, “We may have medicine for corona, but there’s no cure for this bhadvona (taken from Hindi word Bhadwa which means pimp).
User Rofl Gandhi 2.0 was perhaps referring to the famous outburst by Congress spokesperson Rajiv Tyagi, who had called Devgan a bhadwa and dalal. Since then, Devgan’s critics have often targeted him with these two words.
If the jibe by Rofl Gandhi 2.0 was not insulting enough, famous Bollywood filmmaker Anubhav Sinha added insult to injury as he asked, “Bhadvona means?” Pat came a reply, “the advance stage of Dalona (derived from Dalal).”
भड़वोना माने???? https://t.co/0voJRncxFu
— Anubhav Sinha (@anubhavsinha) March 24, 2020
Last month, veteran journalist Rajdeep Sardesai had lashed out at Devgan, calling him a ‘disgrace to what passes off as journalism.’ Sardesai’s all-out attack had come after Devgan of News18 India mocked the former’s decision to dance inside his TV studio to celebrate another accurate exit poll prediction by the media group he works for.