Trust vote: outside parliament, media frenzy grips the place

A battle of wits was fought by journalists, especially from the electronic media, outside Parliament.

A battle of wits was fought by journalists, especially from the electronic media, outside Parliament House as they zealously guarded political leaders from being ‘poached’ by rivals for bytes.

A media frenzy gripped the place just yards away from where a historic political battle was being fought as 39 Outdoor Broadcasting (OB) vans of various television channels dotting the historic Rajpath area captured all the action in connection with the trust vote proceedings.

The lush green garden in fact housed as many as seven make-shift studios.

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Journalists acted as security guards to prevent the netas from being whisked away by rival channels as the scene outside Parliament House resembled a shooting location with dozens of cameras positioned in all directions.

Picking a cue from a security drill, journalists even threw a tight security cordon around MPs escorting them to their make-shift studios.

At one stage, the situation turned a bit hilarious when three reporters of an English channel were simultaneously escorting former Lok Sabha Speaker and Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi to their studio while scribes of other channel gave a hot chase trying to lure him with ‘uncut interviews’ and ‘repeat in primetime slots’.

Former Rajya Sabha MP from CPM Nilotpal Basu was the darling of the media as he was busy giving bytes to all channels followed by BJP MP Khiren Rijju, who was seen hopping from one make-shift ‘newsroom’ to another.

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Former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma along with his daughter Agatha, a newly elected Lok Sabha MP and youngest parliamentarian, obliged only two English news channels — provoking Hindi scribes to lodge a mild protest. The father-daughter duo was seen rushing to the Lok Sabha.

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