What is news? And ‘what a news’? This is decided in the televisions of India by forecast of eyeballs and personal whims of the presenter. This approach is more evident in the English studios.
Amrinder Singh is sacrificing hours in assembly for hosting an ISI Spy-screams an elected MLA from Punjab in the assembly and the news we get in the televisions is’ can we intervene in the private life of a politician’.
Times now nine o clock news has always been my favorite. Arnab goswami ‘s operandi of picking the right headlines, bringing in all people concerned on the issue, asking leading questions and leaving the discussion open are his strengths. But his weakness is if he has an opinion, he normally intervenes the opposite view by talking in middle or snubbing or being plain provocative. In yesterday’s edition, while discussing the Amrinder’s issue, he talks to a BJP politician, a congress politician and a women activist. The former was more sensible in his remarks and said while any personal friendship is a private affair, a relation between two individuals belonging to rival countries and that too between those who have occupied high offices, has to be public. Discussing ‘whether politician’s private affairs can be private or not’ was to divert the issue. Arnob has taken a position that ‘it is their private life and till proven that she is a spy it is a non-issue’. So he cleverly brings in two voices in support and one against and he lets the support free minutes to speak while he keeps cutting short the opposite view. But to his bad luck the support was not impressive. They kept repeating the same argument and kept beating around the bush.
To make it seem it is intervention in the private life of a politician is equivalent to scuttling the issue and making an issue a non-issue. Sukhbir Singh Badal, President, Shiromani Akali Dal said:†Media reports speak of Alam’s link to ISI. Why is Amarinder patronizing her? Amarinder’s wife hasn’t called her a friend. We are not against their friendship. We want a reply to media reports. We want the Indian government to clear it’s stand.” – fair enough. Let them be friends or even more than that, but let government clear the suspicion. It is mandatory because it is between individual belonging to two not so friendly countries. Will the FBI or CIA keep quiet if one of their high-ranking politicians is in an affair with a Russian high profile journalist who is in close links with Russian army? Now this is the issue and not his private life.
CNN-IBN in its edition face the nation debated this yesterday and the sms polls gave a resounding 76% yes for the question should politician’s love life should be open to public scrutiny? . My answer to the question will be yes only if it is between foreigners or people with suspicious background, otherwise it should be private. The chief minister of Tamilnadu has two wives [and one more died] and world knows it. And it has never hampered his political image and it is no concern to any one as long as his wives do not mind. But this is not a similar issue.
Many Sikh books claim Guru Gobind singh had two wives and some say three wives [Mata Jeeto Ji, Mata Sundri and Mata Sahib Kaur] But some texts say they are the names of his only one wife. Sikhism follows monogamy and if Amrinder is having an affair it is his wife who has to bother. Important people in Indian history usually have/had more than one wife as a symbol of their being great and superior to the common man. And Kings were justified in the eyes of public to have more than one wife. Whether it is an issue or not is for their respective religion’s to ponder. But the country has to reaffirm that it is not against the interests of the nation. That they are responsible people and hence will not do it is not enough. This requires investigation by the intelligence agencies.
In the 1960s, the infamous Profumo Affair, the first to bring in a national security angle to an affair between two public persons, rocked UK. Christine Keeler was a former English model and showgirl whose relationship with a British government minister John Profumo left the Harold Macmillan in 1963 red in the face. Profumo had to resign after the scandal. Is it similar is what the nation needs to know.
This is not an issue which propped up yesterday. This was in news since March 2007. And now it is mews because the televisions are smelling eyeballs and more because it is raised in the assembly.The whistle blower- the news in THE TRIBUNE CHANDIGARH which reignited the NEWS is shown below. 
Is it fair for the intelligence agencies to have kept quiet for so long?
Who is Aroosa Alam? she is the mother of popular Pakistani actor and singer Fakhar-e-Alam and daughter of notorious “General Rani” who was Yahya Khan’s mistress and later in jealousy house arrested by. J.A. Bhutto. Alam has two sons. Her elder son is a lawyer in London and her younger son is a rap musician and a popular television host in Pakistan. Singer Adnan Sami is her nephew.
Alam had earlier admitted that she was in India along with her elder son, a 33-year-old lawyer from London, when Punjab was going to the polls. Amarinder Singh became the target of allegations when he disappeared from the campaign scene for about a week to escort his friends from Pakistan to Ajmer.
The lady is believed to have done a course in military strategy last year at Pakistan’s National Defence College, which normally admits only senior officers — enough reason for many to smell a rat. She works for a paper who’s editor is a friend of the nuclear father of Pakistan.
Captain Amarinder Singh, then chief minister of Punjab, went to Pakistan in January, 2004. On that trip, Amarinder Singh went to Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Hasan Abdal; On the way, Amarinder Singh went to Islamabad, where he was entertained by Aroosa as chairperson of the local journalists’ association. She visited Patiala later in the year and was given some kind of a cup by Amarinder Singh at a reception in Patiala Club. Aroosa has a multiple-entry visa for India, thanks to her friends in the external affairs ministry, and makes frequent use of it.
Early in March, Daily Jinha, a newspaper in Pakistani Punjab, reported that Amarinder Singh and Aroosa Alam had got married. It was also rumoured that he had bought her a house in Islamabad for 70 million rupees (that is only Rs 5.3 million in Indian currency).
In an article ‘ Writing on the wall’ by V. Desai is the following excerpts about alam arosa: “Like her mother, Aroosa had a way with men; and having lived in Islamabad, she had come to know quite a few men of power. So in the Eighties she launched on a career: she would write up stories she had learnt from her friends in the government, mostly army generals, and splash them in newspapers. She started in The Muslim, and later on graduated to Pakistan Observer.
One of her most sensational stories related to Brigadier Andrew Durcan of Gordon Highlanders, nicknamed Tartan Barrel on account of his girth, who was military attaché in the British high commission in Islamabad till two years ago. She revealed, without naming any names, that he was intimate with a woman in the Institute of Strategic Studies, and that they had been meeting in Islamabad and England. She was not very explicit about who was spying on whom. But the director of the Institute issued vehement denials, which gave the story even more publicity, and the British government recalled Durcan for having had an improper relationship.”
Now do you think this as an issue or not?
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