Rajasthan Assembly Election 2023: India’s desert state have heard the buggle of Assembly elections with poll panel announcing dates and political parties intensifying their campaign. While Congress puts up a huge fight to sustain power, leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are trying to dethrone the grand-old party.

Rajasthan’s political scenario has always been so dynamic which also revealed the influence of true journalism. In one scenario, even a Chief Minister was asked to quit over a 6-minute long news report. The Chief Minister was Congress leader Haridev Joshi and Rajiv Gandhi took the call.

In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi was India’s Prime Minister who was compelled to take action after an uproar by Santosh Bhartiya’s report for ‘Newsline’ in Doordarshan. The show was India’s first program based on current affairs in the world of TV. The edge of news visible on it used to be sharper than a knife.

The report was based on tribal lives in state’s vulnerable states. Bhartiya went down to such places to find out what developments were made after Rajiv Gandhi visited the tribal areas here. 

Rajiv Gandhi had visited the village

Former MP and senior journalist Santosh Bhartiya mentioned an incident in his book ‘VP Singh, Chandrashekhar, Sonia Gandhi and I’, that on the day six months of Rajiv Gandhi’s visit were completed, the follow up story had reached that village to do so.

In 1985, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited a tribal village in Rajasthan and the, directed Rajasthan Chief Minister Haridev Joshi to provide all possible assistance to the tribals and their problems should be resolved immediately. Six months after this visit of Rajiv Gandhi, Santosh went to the same village to prepare a follow-up story of Bhartiya to find out how seriously the CM took the PM’s instructions.

However, upon reaching there Santosh Bhartiya found that the tall claims proved to be false. The tribals were cheated in the name of basic facilities, the school built for the children was telling the story of the government system itself. They also came to know that the tribal husband-wife to whom Rajiv Gandhi had given Rs 200 was taken back by government employees the next day.

He wrote, “I started walking from the same place from where Rajiv Gandhi had left the car and started walking. First of all, I found a drain, in which Rajiv Gandhi had seen how much good work the Rajasthan government had done for the tribals. At that time the drain was dry. When I put my hand, sand came in my hand. There was only the structure of the drain. When we moved ahead, we saw the school built for the tribals which was completely destroyed. There were no children there.”

Santosh Bhartiya captured the entire incident and made a report on it. The camera captured plight of the village under the editing of Vinod Dua and MJ Akbar presented it to the public in his own style.

As soon as the news broke out, there was an uproar. This news from Rajasthan had shaken even Delhi, then Rajiv Gandhi came into action and himself demanded the resignation of Rajasthan Chief Minister Hardev Joshi. In this way, a six-minute story became the cause of a major change in the politics of Rajasthan.