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Thane, Maharashtra, India
Mahesh Vijapurkar is a longtime journalist, had worked for two national newspapers, The Indian Express and later, The Hindu. Thane is his adopted city. Any views or inputs for use could be mailed to him at mvijapurkar@gmail.com

17 October 2010

This is how it happened

Ever wonder how a news TV crew managed to get two politicians of Maharashtra, India talking about how they gathered money for Sonia Gandhi's rally in Sewagram this week?

They did it because the two - Maharashtra Congress unit chief Manikrao Thakre and former minister Satish Chaturvedi were foolish enough to talk their private thoughts five feet from the TV cameras being set up and the microphones arrayed for a press conference.

The duo spoke how each cabinet minister was asked to cough up Rs 10 lakh apiece, how one of them gave only half of that and how the chief minister Ashok Chavan fell in line and conceded Rs 2 cr to pay for buses to ferry audiences to the rally. For more, read what I wrote on this - the how part by clicking on this link:


You would now know that the news channel got quite some juicy stuff without having to do an elaborate sting. The sting is a strict no-no to many journalists but here these guys just invited themselves to be massacred by the media by keeping their guard down.

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