Shekhar Gupta, the owner of the online news portal, The Print, and the Chief of Editor’s Guild, while speaking at a discussion on ‘How India Voted’ admitted that journalists chose to ignore the effects of Modi government’s welfare schemes before the elections. “I have to say this very honestly that we journalists at the commentariat chose not to see it. Even when we see it we compulsively try to deny it”, said Gupta.

Prior to the historic victory of the NDA in the elections, the left-liberal section of the media was spreading the theory that there was widespread resentment against the Modi government among the general people. The allegations of high unemployment, farmers’ problems, economic slowdown etc were cited as the reasons why Modi will not come back to power. It was claimed that various schemes of the government didn’t reach and benefit most people in India. But now Shekhar Gupta has confirmed that they peddled such lies by deliberately ignoring the benefits that people had obtained from various schemes of the government.

Speaking on the embarrassing defeat of the Congress Party in the recent Lok Sabha elections, Gupta said that the party suffers from autoimmune disease. “In so many days of campaigning, I never heard Rahul Gandhi or anybody from Congress Party, say anything good about what their own government did under UPA II. This is the autoimmune disease of the Congress Party. They want to blame Modi, they want to blame the media”, said Gupta.

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“The vote has been bullshitted for too long in the name of schemes. The voter in this country does not trust the Congress schemes. Forget it. Anything that happened in the past, very little got to her”, he added.

Gupta confessed that though he was looking for the evidence against the schemes of the Modi government he did not find any evidence. “We were hoping to see evidence for the contrary but we were not finding it. We were finding gas cylinders. We would even peek inside a house and find a gas cylinder”, said a disappointed Gupta.

Here is the clipped portion with incriminating evidence. But dont think there will be any lessons learnt. pic.twitter.com/EHfUeDq8KY — spv (@shalinispv) May 31, 2019

He said that the government was using the JAM trinity, the Jan Dhan Account, Addhaar and Mudra loan, which the left liberals hate, to successfully help people. He said, “initially I thought that Mudra loans were rubbish, that these were all fakes. But I have videos… 50 kms from Azamgarh, a Dalit saying that I got Rs 50,000 Mudra loans, made this chai shop, I repay Rs 1,300 every month. If I don’t repay on time, the bank manager sends somebody to me. And then I came back and checked the larger data, 4.81 crore people have got Mudra loans, and Rs 2.1 lakh crore has been disbursed.”

Then Shekhar Gupta says, “Now I have to say this very honestly, that we journalists and commentariats, chose not to see it. And even when we see it increasingly, we compulsively tried to deny it. ‘Oh they got the gas cylinders, but they can’t afford the next cylinder. The next one is full price.’ But that is a lie, the next one is not full price. The next one you pay full price, you get the subsidy amount back at your bank account.”

“The fact is that these people had never seen the delivery of anything. And even if they got any delivery they had not seen the delivery of anything without having to pay bribes for it including in most cases NAREGA wages. It’s a big change. It’s a big governance exercise. You may like it you may not like it but smart people are learning from it”, Gupta said talking about how the Modi government changed the governance in the country.

Gupta said that the Congress Party lacked the intellect to counter this governance of Modi because the Party did not like facts. “It is the Congress Party’s lack of intellect, lack of commitment and arrogance”, said Gupta criticising the Congress Party.

Such facts coming from someone like Shekhar Gupta who is often seen peddling fake news and lies about the Modi government seemed surreal.