The state of Indian media has never been so shambolic in the country’s history with individuals masquerading as journalists crawling before the ruling party with alarming regularity. The list of the pro-government TV anchors is endless but some usual suspects have often ended up rubbing the news consuming public up the wrong away because of how they appear to take enormous pride in flaunting their shameful biases in favour of the ruling party. Amish Devgan, also dubbed as the poor man’s Arnab Goswami, is prominent among them. Devgan faced incessant trolling once again last week after he appeared to copy a tweet from BJP’s IT Cell chief Amit Malviya to praise Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This was after Malviya posted a photo of Modi seen alongside a statue of Maratha king Shivaji and termed it an ‘iconic picture.’ Malviya posted the photo at 8.34 PM on 16 October.
The same evening at 9 PM, 26 minutes after Malviya paid his tribute to PM Modi, Devgan also shared the same image with an identical caption. Devgan also tagged the prime minister in his tweet perhaps to ensure that the person whose photo he was praising knew about his sycophancy. Although, it was not clear from the tweets of Malviya or Devgan as to what made the photo so ‘iconic.’
As expected, Devgan began to face public ridicule with many concluding that it was hard to distinguish between a BJP IT cell worker and the person claiming to be a journalist.
Here’s how they reacted:
One of them is supposedly a Journalist and one of them is the BJP IT Cell head.
But you won’t be able to tell the difference… pic.twitter.com/yxn9Hgguze
— Dhruv Rathee (@dhruv_rathee) October 16, 2019
दुसरा भी @BJP4India का ही बन्दा बस फर्क इत्ना है @amitmalviya ईमानदारी से नौकरी करता है और दुसरा @AMISHDEVGAN बेमानी से दलाली करता है
— Vikrant Sinha?? (@vikrantsinha2) October 17, 2019
Iconic photo of DM @AMISHDEVGAN
cc @RTforINC pic.twitter.com/VTl6iXfO6o
— Dumbit Patra (@Officialdumbit) October 16, 2019
धीरे चाट भाई , हमारे प्रधानमंत्री जी की छिल जाएगी !
— DeshKaAgent ?? (@DeshkaAgent) October 16, 2019
Rajiv Tyagi ne toh surf bola tha, “Saabit” toh tune Kiya hai. ??
— Amrit Singh (@AmritSi80152490) October 16, 2019
Devgan, who is an anchor with the Mukesh Ambani-owned News18 India, was in the news last year when Congress spokesperson Rajiv Tyagi had famously called him a pimp on LIVE TV.