The India alliance September 14, decided that all the political parties in their combine would boycott fourteen anchors from various mainstream TV news channels.

A statement published by the INDIA front’s media committee said that they will not send their representatives to shows hosted by the anchors on the list.

INDIA alliance members say that they do not want to be part of news programmes that they feel ‘are only meant to vilify the opposition or to damage the social fabric of the country.‘

‘The coordination committee authorized the sub-group on media to decide upon the names of the anchors on whose shows none of the INDIA parties will send their representatives, said Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal after the meeting of INDIA bloc’s coordination committee on Wednesday.

Among the list of anchors that the representatives of INDIA will not be appearing for debates with are: Aman Chopra, Amish Devgan and Anand Narasihman of News 18, Aditya Tyagi of Bharat Express, Sudhir Chaudhary and Chitra Tripathi of Aaj Tak, Navika Kumar of Times Now, Arnab Goswami of Republic Bharat, Gaurav Sawant and Shiv Aroor of India Today, Rubika Liyaquat of Bharat24 and Prachi Parashar of India TV. 

The INDIA alliance took the decision to boycott the said anchors after their first coordination committee meeting, which took place on Wednesday, narrowing a larger list down to the fourteen named.

AP leader Raghav Chadha on Wednesday said,”All alliance parties will participate in the public meeting (to be held in Bhopal) and raise issues of price rise, unemployment and corruption. There was also consensus over the caste census. We have also authorised our media committee to release the list of TV anchors on whose shows leaders of our alliance parties won’t participate,”

 ‘There are some anchors who conduct provocative debates. We’ll make a list of them and INDIA alliance partners will stop going to their shows,’ Chadha later added.

The first meeting of the coordination committee was held at the residence of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar in New Delhi. 

While political parties have boycotted news channels in the past, this is the first time that an alliance has decided collectively to boycott media personalities.