TIFF-2022 award for documentary on Ravish Kumar
New Delhi: ‘While We Watched’, the 94-minute Hindi documentary by award-winning filmmaker Vinay Shukla on the professional journey of Magsaysay Award winning Indian journalist Ravish Kumar, won the Amplify Voices Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF-2022).
‘While We Watched’ – titled ‘Namaskar! Main Ravish Kumar’ in Hindi – was produced by BRITDOC Films and LONO Studio.
A film that focuses on Ravish Kumar’s efforts to uphold facts and truth and simultaneously unveil mere hearsay, ‘While We Watched’ received a standing ovation at the film festival.
TIFF film programmer Thom Powers said that people concerned with the future of television journalism ought to watch the documentary, since, although its tale is situated in India, its reference to putting forth truth fighting the spread of falsehood would be applicable in any country.
Shukla called the feature-length film an expression of his love for journalism. He also called journalists ‘the greatest storytellers of our times’.
Speaking on communicating with Ravish Kumar who won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2019, Shukla said that he watched the veteran journalist at work for two years, the way the team ascertained the truth behind a news piece. This, the director said, taught him the efforts put in behind the screen, even every sort of cost the journalist paid, for every news show that a viewer watched. Since he realized it was a tough job, the film was a tribute to the personal cost that journalists pay to get their job right, Shukla stressed.
Luke W Moody, who is one of the producers of the film, called it an effort at bringing to light the loss that the world would face if such quality journalism had to die.
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Rahul Gandhi demands 'clean, pure' voter list; says 'vote theft' issue will explode soon
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New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday said the Opposition is protesting for the right to vote for every Indian and demanded a "clean and pure" voter list, asserting that the issue of alleged irregularities pointed out by him will "explode" soon as it is not related to a single constituency but the whole country.
Indicating that he would not submit a signed affidavit as sought by the Election Commission, Gandhi asserted that the data analysed by the Congress to provide "proof" of "vote theft" is taken from the EC website.
"This is their data. It is not my data that I should sign. It is their data only and has been taken from their website. This is only a move to distract," he told reporters.
The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, who participated in a protest march by the opposition on the "vote theft" issue, said the Election Commission is "silent" as the truth is before the entire nation after his charge that over one lakh votes in an assembly constituency in Karnataka were found to be fake in a research conducted by his party.
"Another thing I want to tell is that this has not just happened in Bangalore, but in different constituencies across the country, and the Election Commission knows this. The EC knows that this data will explode. What it is trying to control and hide, we will bring it out, and it will explode. The EC knows this," he told reporters.
Gandhi was briefly detained along with others as police stopped the protest march by opposition MPs from Parliament House to the EC office.
"They (EC) cannot talk as the truth is before the entire nation," the Congress leader said as he was being taken away in a bus by the police.
"This fight is not political, but for saving the Constitution," he asserted.
This fight is for 'one man, one vote' and we want a clean, pure voter list," the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha added.
He said all the MPs of the INDIA alliance were stopped and taken into custody when they were going to meet the Election Commission.
"The truth of 'vote theft' is now before the country. This fight is not political; it is a fight to protect democracy, the Constitution, and the right to ‘one person, one vote’.
"The united opposition and every voter in the country demand a clean and transparent voter list. And, we will secure this right at all costs," Gandhi claimed in a post on X later.
Gandhi had on Thursday cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were "stolen" through five types of manipulation in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka. He alleged there were 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single-address voters, 4,132 voters with invalid photos and 33,692 voters misusing Form 6 of new voters.
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