Word: tehelka
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...ranks of Indian cricket, the national sport. Now the fledgling web site has stirred an even bigger storm by secretly filming politicians, bureaucrats, army officers and business touts as they boast about fixing defense deals and, in some cases, are seen actually pocketing bundles of banknotes offered by Tehelka reporters posing as representatives of a fictitious British manufacturer of thermal imaging binoculars...
...Tehelka's sting turned New Delhi's corridors of power into a battlefield. Among the casualties are the national president of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (resigned); the national president of the Samta Party, part of Vajpayee's ruling coalition (resigned); Defense Minister George Fernandes (resigned), and several top army officers (suspended...
...There are even a couple of deserters: Two senior ministers belonging to the Trinamool Congress resigned from Vajpayee's coalition government out of concern about the impact of the Tehelka tapes on forthcoming elections in their party's home province of West Bengal. Other coalition partners were frantically assessing the long-term political impact of the scandal...
...Tehelka tapes may have forever altered the political landscape for Vajpayee and the BJP. The party's popular appeal isn't based entirely on its Hindu nationalist ideology. Equally important has been its image as an honest party that would never compromise on national security. The genial, portly Vajpayee is the personification of these qualities. But with the repeated airing of the Tehelka videotapes on TV, what was still largely cocktail party gossip in New Delhi has turned into a national sensation - Vajpayee heads a corrupt administration, and fortunes are being made from kickbacks on defense deals...
...they may also be discovering new heroes. Tehelka investigative reporter Anirudh Behl, who doggedly pursued both the cricket match-fixing and the defense ministry exposes, got mobbed when he stepped out onto the street in New Delhi. Two grown men grabbed and kissed him. "I'm amazed at the response of ordinary people," says Behl. "There's this whole feeling of empowerment, this feeling that somebody has struck a blow against corruption on their behalf." Things are certainly heating up in Indian politics - you don't need thermal imaging binoculars to detect that...