New Delhi, October 26: Jindal Steel chairman Naveen Jindal on Thursday accused TV channel Zee of "extortion'' and "blackmail'' for allegedly demanding Rs 100 crore worth of advertisements in lieu of blanking out negative reports.
Earlier, Jindal's Jindal Steel and Power Limited(JSPL) had lodged an FIR on October 2 against Zee executives, Sudhir Chaudhary and Samir Ahluwalia, for alleged extortion, and had backed up his charge with 90 minutes of video recordings of an alleged sting on them.
Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Jindal said that he had been forced to go public with the "expose'' because of the channel's relentless "propaganda'' against his company. Jindal alleged that Zee News editor Choudhary and Zee Business editor Samir Ahluwalia had met executives from JSPL to suggest that they would stop the campaign over the allocation of coal blocks to JPSL if company committed to pay Rs 20 crore to the TV channel in advertizing revenue. They subsequently hiked the demand to 100 crore, Jindal alleged.
He screened the CD of the "sting" on the two Zee channel heads allegedly asking for money for more "positive coverage" as supporting proof.
The charge was rejected by Chaudhary and Ahluwalia, who issued a statement to "condemn" and "reject" the CD. "We see this as a deliberate attempt to malign and to defame us... We see the attempt today by Naveen Jindal to come out with a video as a deliberate attempt to not only suppress us but also silence the growing demand for an independent probe in the Coalgate scam.''
They asserted their channel would not be deterred by "diversionary tactic'' adopted by Jindal and JSPL, and would continue to report on the Rs 1.86 lakh crore Coalgate scam.
Recounting events at the press conference on Thursday, Jindal accused Zee of telecasting factually incorrect and defamatory stories from September 7 to 13. Jindal said that executives of the two companies met between September 13 and 19. "During this time there were no stories on JSPL. The channel kept pressuring us to give them a cheque. Dabaav dal rahe the ki aapki badnaami karte rahenge (We were under pressure that if we did not pay up Zee would continue to defame us),'' he said.
Jindal said that faced with the persistent "blackmail" and "extortion", the company decided to expose them. "We felt that we should expose them (Zee).''
"Our firm has been in business for 40 years and had never received a blackmail threat like this," alleged Jindal.The press conference was repeatedly interrupted by a Chhattisgarh-based RTI activist Ramesh Agrawal, who alleged being victimized by the Jindal group.
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