Let's focus on the present

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

Former RSS leader Balraj Madhok's revelation that BJP/RSS leaders were also close to the KGB, triggered off by the Mitrokhin diary revelations, was supposed to be the start of another round of controversy.

But, for the most part, it was ignored by most newspapers across the country, though, expectedly, the Hindi-language newspapers were a bit more excited about the event.

Dainik Jagran had it on the front page the day the allegations were made, with a box quoting Madhok as saying former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and RSS leader Nanaji Deshmukh used to be in touch with the KGB regularly.

Jagran, however, also had an editorial on it the same day saying the idea of probing the matter was nothing but a waste of time. It was simply not possible, the paper editorialised, to probe into something that happened so long ago; and even if you assumed it was, what good could possibly come out of exhuming old skeletons?

Rajasthan Patrika was a lot more colourful, and led with the story on page one with the colourful headline "Hamam mein sabhi nange" (everyone's naked in the communal bathing pool). The strap ran to say, why talk of just Vajpayee and Advani, even Balasaheb Deoras was influenced by the KGB.

Bangla newspapers continued to play down the controversy over the Mitrokhin diary revelations involving Congress and Left leaders. No paper gave any elaborate coverage of these revelations.

None of them, in fact, carried any of these items on the front page in the past week or so. There were no editorial comments either. Of course, the cricket controversy and the forthcoming Durga Puja festivities were of greater concern for the Bangla newspapers.

All the three major Kannada newspapers played down the controversy. While Prajavani buried the story in its inside pages, Vijaya Karnataka and Kannada Prabha carried the news on the front page on October 3. Kannada Prabha carried it as second lead.

Except for this, it has mostly buried the news in inside pages during the week and in the briefs column on one day. None of the Kannada papers wrote an edit on the controversy, nor carried any analysis on the feature pages.

The coverage was routine and mostly on the demands of BJP president L K Advani, for a judicial probe by a retired supreme court judge and for a government white paper on the total foreign money that has flowed into the country over the last 58 years.

Prajavani also carried the statement of Congress spokesman Prakash Jaiswal accusing the BJP of unnecessarily raising this issue now as it has no serious issues to debate.

Tamil daily Dinamalar restricted its coverage to the public statements made by the BJP and the Congress on the issue.