Would Times Now Drag on the Lalitgate till Start of Monsoon Session ?

 Lalit Kumar Modi  ✔@LalitKModi Media owners must realize that they all came to me for favors too. Or to politicians or to my friends. #enoughisenough #letscleanse

Time for @vineetjaintimes is coming. Dossier fully under making. Wait and watch #india's no one #playboy details https://twitter.com/sudhirs30223957/status/615247654470094848 - 29 Jun 2015

                     

Would Times Now drag on the Lalitgate for another three weeks? Would Lalitgate in the coming monsoon session of the Parliament  be the biggest ever victory for the Times Group? But what would it cost to the Times?

Insiders reveal that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was of the view that a section of  media has been exaggerating facts in Lalit gate with a motive to malign  the image of his government. The PM also feels that Congress has connived with a media outlet in a bid to disrupt the forthcoming monsoon session of the Parliament.  

Modi seems to be neither happy with his ‘spin masters’  who failed to contain the high decibel news channels nor he was at ease with the Jains, the owners of the Bennett and Coleman Company which owns Times Now, the most vociferous channel on Lalitgate .

Though Mr Modi has not yet shared his mind over the ongoing controversy with his Cabinet colleagues or top secretaries but his body language has given a clear signal to his lieutenants. According to a close aide of Modi , the Finance Ministry is busy gathering data on owners of two channels- News X and Times Now . 

Both the channels have  launched a nonstop media war against  Modi’s Cabinet as well as BJP’s government in Rajasthan. “ BJP leadership including Amit Shah was of the view that on Sushma front  both the channels exaggerated certain facts and carried deliberate news items to tarnish government’s image.  Shah has taken the so called biased coverage quite personally,” said a BJP MP close to Amit Shah.” 

You don’t know Shah and Modi. If both are convinced that someone is playing the mischief and it has a hidden agenda than the duo would take a subtle way to settle the score. Look what happened to Advani. What happened to bureaucrats, the Sharma brothers of Gujarat? Where is Shashi Ruia now ? Where is Sanjay Joshi of RSS ? ” he added.

                                                                 

Now only on one count Vineet Jain can avoid the inevitable. In case Times Now is pursuing the agenda against  the government  at the behest of someone in the government, he may survive another day. India Samvad Bureau wrote this story in http://indiasamvad.co.in/prime-minister-versus-image-and-vineet-jain-versus-lalit-modi-stage-is-set-for-war/

Media Executive Says, "While Times Samir is into God, Vineet is into women.”

• Lalit Kumar Modi 
  

  ✔@LalitKModi
  Media owners must realize that they all came to me for favors too. Or to politicians or to my friends. #enoughisenough #letscleanse
 Lalit Kumar Modi  ✔@LalitKModi

Time for @vineetjaintimes is coming. Dossier fully under making. Wait and watch #india's no one #playboy details https://twitter.com/sudhirs30223957/status/615247654470094848 …

2:04 AM - 29 Jun 2015

Lalit Modi tweeted, "Time for @vineetjaintimes is coming. Dossier fully under making. Wait and watch #india's no one #playboy" .Sources said that most vulnerable target could be Times Group MD,  Vineet Jain, the man infamous for his lifestyle and private parties. The IB’s top head located in Mumbai have gathered  confidential ‘visual data’ on Vineet’s playboy like lifestyle . The visual CD on Jain can embarrass the Times group if  it is  passed on to someone like Lalit Modi. 

Earlier Lalit has tweeted that he has explosive material on Vineet Jain whom Modi considers to be  a playboy. “ The government could teach a lesson to the Jains like the Congress taught them earlier in case of Vineet’s father Ashok Jain. While Lalit Modi would throw dirt on Vineet at a personal level, the agencies would rake investment issues related to cross-border  financial transactions,” said a Deputy Secretary level official  in Finance Ministry who had the financial dossier on the Times Groups.

In fact Vineet’s elder brother Sameer is out of sight of the agencies due to his saintly type image. Sameer is  mostly occupied with religious works. The real problem lies with Vineet whose lifestyle is no less than Lalit Modi. A few years back the US news magazine The New Yorker carried a story on Jains. Describing Vineet Jain, the magazine said, “ unlike Samir, Vineet is divorced and was often seen in the company of beautiful women; people who don’t know him sometimes mistake him for a playboy. “Samir is into God,” an Indian publishing executive says. “Vineet is into women.”

Vineet is purely a businessman and holds the strings of Times Now. Sources said that in a bid to rake up numbers and balance its image of being a neutral media platform, Arnab picked up the Sunday Times story on Sushma-Lalit Modi affair and played up to maximum. “ Within a week BJP tried to intervene and almost  cornered Arnab,  but it was Vineet Jain who gave the  go ahead to build up the story. 

Times Now’s clone News X was quick to copy. In fact News X owners are sitting ducks for ahencies like ED and DRI. The kind of business the News X’s proprietors  do can put them into trouble at any given point of time,” said a senior journalist once working with Times Now and later with News X.

Unlike Prannoy Roys, Subhash Chandras and Rajat Sharmas,  the Jain brothers hardly move into corridors of power.  “If Jains are in trouble there is hardly anyone except a Bureau Chief in the Newspaper to bail them out. The power networking of Jains is their weakest point. The Jains have themselves admitted to it.  

The New Yorker writes, “ Vineet and Samir share a belief that government affairs and politics should not be the focus of their lives or of their newspapers. Even critics praise them for having no political agenda to advance their business. Hobnobbing with government leaders holds no interest for the Jains.

When President Obama visited India, Vineet declined an invitation to a state dinner. “What will I do?” he said to me. “It’s just meeting somebody, shaking hands. What’s the point?” Besides, he added, “the closer I get to politicians, the more they’ll interfere. It’s a Catch-22. Politicians are no one’s friends.” If he befriended them, they’d call and complain about a story, or pressure him to run a different story. “You start getting calls every day. We don’t get any calls. It’s so easy,” he said, smiling.

Top sources said that financial agencies are in no hurry to initiate any action against the Jains. The officials at ED,CBDT and CBEC are aware that the Jains at the end of the day follow same traditional procedure  of business operations and same formula of making profits. “ Two things are clear. Vineet Jain cannot be a Ramnath Goenka. Secondly  for a TRP hike  or a shift from a political line or for strengthening a brand image you cannot exaggerate the magnitude of a story to such an extent.  Remember Narendra Modi is not a Vajpayee. Modi can forgive a Rajnath or a Uma Bharti.  But he cannot forgive those who have tried to humiliate him. In this case Modi’s humiliation is more than his fault,” said a former TV journalist based in Gujarat.

Now only on one count Vineet Jain can avoid the inevitable. In case Times Now is pursuing the agenda against  the government  at the behest of someone in the government, he may survive another day.ISB wrote this story.