Giving a new angle to the BBC documentary row, BJP MP and advocate Mahesh Jethmalani on Tuesday linked the series by UK broadcaster on PM Modi and Gujarat riots to Chinese state-linked Huawei.

The documentary by BBC on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which questioned his leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots, has triggered massive uproar with a section of people slamming the UK broadcaster for documenting “lies” in a “propaganda piece”.

Tweeting a report by spectator.co.uk, Jethmalani said: “Why is #BBC so anti-India? Because it needs money desperately enough to take it from Chinese state linked Huawei (see link) & pursue the latter’s agenda (BBC a fellow traveller, Comrade ?Jairam?)It’s a simple cash-for-propaganda deal. BBC is up for sale.”

The two-part BBC documentary that claims to have investigated certain aspects relating to the 2002 Gujarat riots when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state, has been trashed by the Ministry of External Affairs as a “propaganda piece” that lacked objectivity and reflected a “colonial mindset”.

The Spectator report posted by Mahesh Jethmalani – headlined: BBC still taking money from sanctioned Huawei – talks about questionable new corporate partnerships of BBC, one of them being with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant which was sanctioned by the US in 2019 and barred from the UK’s 5G network in 2020 over security concerns.

ALSO READ: ‘Has BBC Ever Had Courage to…’: Uproar & Divided Opinions Over Documentary on PM Modi 

Huawei, as per the report, has been alleged to have aided the Chinese authorities in creating surveillance technology that targets the country’s Uyghur minority population.

“But all that’s not enough to deter the BBC, which is still taking Huawei’s money to fund its overseas journalism. Adverts displayed on BBC.com this week show adverts paid and presented by Huawei boasting about ‘The new frontier of education: How can we bridge the education gap and bring bright young minds into the digital future?’ The adverts gush how ‘UNESCO and Huawei are focused on closing the digital divide’ and writes glowingly about Huawei’s tech initiatives,” The Spectator report states.

The BBC documentary row reached the Supreme Court on Monday, which will hear next week pleas challenging the Centre’s decision to block the controversial series even as Law Minister Kiren attacked the petitioners for “wasting precious time” of the top court.

Taking note of the submissions of lawyer ML Sharma and senior advocate CU Singh, appearing for veteran journalist N Ram, TMC MP Mahua Moitra and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan, seeking urgent listing of the petitions against the Centre’s ban on the two-episode BBC series using its emergency powers, a bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said it will hear the matter on February 6.

One of the petitioners also alleged that the ban on the documentary ‘India: The Modi question’ was “malafide, arbitrary and unconstitutional”.

Reacting strongly, Rijiju tweeted “this is how they waste the precious time of Hon’ble Supreme Court where thousands of common citizens are waiting and seeking dates for justice”.

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