Pakistan targets India over Arnab Goswami chat leak

  • Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan waded into the controversy over leaked conversations between a television channel head and the chief of television ratings agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC).
  • He said that they proved that the Modi government had planned the Balakot air strikes in February 2019 in order to “win general elections”, and to “push our nuclearised region to the brink of a conflict it cannot afford”.

THE CHAT LEAK CONTROVERSY

  • The Alleged leaked WhatsApp chats pertain to discussions between Arnab Goswami and former BARC CEO Partho Dasupta.
  • So far there is no evidence to confirm the genuineness of these chats.
  • The source of these alleged leaked chats is rather unknown till now.

TRP SCAM

  • The chat leak brought the TRP scam in focus as Arnab is seen asking help from PMO with relations to the TRP Scam in the chats.
  • Mumbai police had arrested Partho Das in the TRP scam.
  • The scam is about a ‘major racket’ which was “fraudulently involved in manipulating Television Ratings Points (TRP)” of TV channels, including Republic TV.
  • The barometers used to measure TRP’s were kept at several undisclosed houses across the country, based on which the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) measures TRPs of channels.
  • It was alleged that some channels were paying former employees of agency Hansa Research Group which was contracted by BARC to carry out the research. 
  • The Hansa group in turn was paying certain households selected as barometers for calculating TRPs to keep certain channels like Republic switched on to show higher TRPs.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hamas V. PLO

The irony in the ongoing conflict is that Hamas, whose founding members were encouraged by Israel in the 1970s and 80s against Yasser Arafat’s secular national movement, has turned out to be Israel’s biggest rival in the Palestinian territories. HAMAS Hamas was established after the first intifada broke out in 1987, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  Intifada was the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  The first intifada lasted from 1987 to 1993, and the second began in 2000. As strife between Israel and Palestine continued to soar as the latter resorted to the First Intifada, or uprising, in December 1987, Hamas as an organisation led by Sunni-Islamic fundamentalists, began to take shape.  Hamas could gain immediate and immense popularity within the protesting Palestinians because it was ...
Read more

G7 global corporate Tax Deal

Image
The Group of Seven (G7) countries have backed the proposal to impose a common global corporate tax. It would be aimed at preventing multinational businesses from evading taxes and also squeeze the havens which attract tax evaders due to the low-rate jurisdictions.  The consensus to adopt a common tax rate was reached at the G7 finance ministers' meeting held in Buckingham (London) on June 5.  THE PROPOSAL The tax proposal endorsed by the US, the UK, France and other G7 countries has two parts.  The main part of the proposal states that countries around the world should tax their home companies' overseas profits at a rate of at least 15%.  The companies have multiple branches spread across various jurisdictions, they transfer the bulk of their profit in accounts set up in countries that offer the lowest tax rate.  Often, these tax havens are the Caribbean Islands such as Bahamas or British Virgin Islands, or at times, countries like Ireland where the corp...
Read more

The statue of Swami Vivekananda at the JNU campus

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually unveiled a life-sized statue of Swami Vivekananda at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus on November 12. JNUSU (JNU students' union), un response, planned to protest on campus.  They believe the Modi government “openly supported” violence on campuses and is attacking universities with the National Education Policy which will result in fund cuts and privatization of education. FUNDING CONTROVERSY It was on June 30, 2017 that JNU’s Executive Council (EC) first gave approval for the statue.  The administration said it was installing the statue to give the campus a more “pleasing look” as Vivekananda had contributed to “nation building”. The administration remained mum on who was funding the statue and how much it would cost.  Then JNU Students’ Union president N Sai Balaji filed several RTIs to know about the funding. In January 2018, he filed an RTI seeking the total cost of construction of the statue as well as the sour...
Read more