13 out of 38 candidates selected for the job are Muslim, Sudarshan News started the raga of ‘job jihad’

On 15 April 2022, Suresh Chavhanke, editor of the right-wing channel Sudarshan News, once again targeted the Muslim community, calling them indulging in a criminal conspiracy and calling it ‘job jihad’.

Chavhanke created this new controversy when a week ago a list of 10 candidates went viral on social media. In this list were students of Jamia Millia Islamia who were selected for the apprenticeship program of Pawan Hans Limited Company and all these candidates are Muslim. It was alleged that Hindus were being denied jobs by government undertakings. Chavhanke said that Muslims are getting the benefit of 100% undeclared reservation in Pawan Hans.

‘Job jihad’ is a concoction, like other words allegedly coined by right-wing factions, which claim to give priority to jobs for Muslims by conspiring with the livelihood of Hindus.

पवन हंस नहीं हलाल हंस!ये भी बहुत बड़ी साजिश है हिन्दूओं के विरुद्ध! @SureshChavhanke pic.twitter.com/JAU41kOoCg

— Sagar Kumar “Sudarshan News” (@KumaarSaagar) April 15, 2022

Protests were held outside Pawan Hans’s office in Delhi in the past, led by Ragini Tiwari, who was imprisoned in the video of leading a Hindutva mob in Maujpur and pelting stones during the Delhi riots. Suresh Chavhanke asked in the teaser of his Naukri Jihad show on Sudarshan channel, ‘Can a government company employ only Muslims? Is there 100% reservation for Muslims in Pawan Hans?

In subsequent scenes in the teaser, Tiwari and others can be seen climbing the gate of Pawan Hans’s office. Chavhanke is addressing them as ‘lioness’ and ‘tigress’. Tiwari and others can be seen making objectionable remarks against Muslims and Jamia at the gate. Tiwari can be heard saying, ‘Paisa is of Shri Ram and benefit of Chuslam’.

पवन हंस के मुख्यालय पर हिंदुओं का प्रदर्शन लगातार जारी। मुसलमानों को 100% अघोषित आरक्षण देने से विवादों में घिरी है सरकारी कंपनी। @PawanHansLtd @JM_Scindia @Gen_VKSingh #BindasBol 8pm Live pic.twitter.com/1nTeiV7Q0w

— Dr. Suresh Chavhanke “Sudarshan News” (@SureshChavhanke) April 16, 2022

In his live video, another person says, ‘Why give employment to Jamia terrorists who oppose Modi and Yogi? We will ensure that Muslims are thrown out and Hindus get employment?’ When the claims of Sudarshan and Hindutva protesters were investigated and found to be false. According to official documents obtained, Jamia Millia started the Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics course in partnership with Pawan Hans. This course has a total of 60 students in two batches (Avionics and Mechanical), which are divided into thirty-thirty in both the courses. It is a self-financing course with an annual fee of Rs 1.3 lakh, of which only 30 per cent goes to the university and the rest to Pawan Hans.

सरकारी कंपनी में सिर्फ मुस्लिमों को ही नौकरी क्यों?@PawanHansLtd में मुस्लिमों को 100% आरक्षण ?#नौकरी_जिहाद के विरुद्ध पवन हंस मुख्यालय पर हिंदू वीरांगनाओ का हल्ला बोल…

देखिए #BindasBol शनिवार रात 8 बजे @SureshChavhanke जी के साथ pic.twitter.com/Lm5kFGmCDX

— Sudarshan News (@SudarshanNewsTV) April 15, 2022

The selection criteria are based on the sum of the aggregate marks of a candidate in six semesters and the number of DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) modules cleared by the candidate. A total of 30 students were shortlisted for the interview this year. Of these 30 students, four (two Muslim and two Hindu) withdrew due to personal reasons. Out of the remaining 26 candidates, 10 candidates (five from each batch) were selected. Later a Muslim student who passed the interview also did not attend due to personal reasons.

When contacted two Hindu candidates of Avionics Branch and wanted to know their stand on this controversy, one of them Shubh Solanki said, “My friend Deepit Goyal and I are one of the toppers of our batch. We walked out of it for personal reasons. I am preparing for competitive exams. The election process was completely transparent and based on merit. Being a minority institution, naturally there is a high number of Muslim students here. As a Hindu student in Jamia, I did not face any discrimination, all my friends are Muslim.

Unclear selection process
Contacted another candidate Ansh Agarwal, who said that he had a problem with the method of selection but it was far from communal. Ansh said, “As a student, my problem is with the selection criteria. I want to know the weightage given to various selection parameters and whether students were selected from different branches.

Ansh said, “Usually more priority is given to modules than marks, but due to Corona, we insisted that CGPA should also be given weightage. There is 33 per cent reservation for women but we do not know whether both the branches (avionics and mechanical) were combined for reservation or not. So this election process is ambiguous. He further said, “Because of this, both Muslim and Hindu students – who did well in module or CGPA – have suffered. There is no basis for calling it communal and I am not trying to sensationalize it like news channels. I just want to know what went wrong with the students who were not selected.

Another student pointed out that since it was a practical course, the emphasis was on the modules passed by the students. Another student told on the condition of confidentiality that till now a total of 38 candidates have been selected by Pawan Hans, out of which only 13 are Muslims. A candidate said, “How can this selection be unfair, when the entire panel consisted of non-Muslim people and the criteria were based on merit. This controversy will affect the employment of other candidates (both Muslim and Hindu) of the university.

According to the information, Pawan Hans has also done a similar partnership with Mumbai University. A total of 15 candidates were selected from there this year and out of them only three were Muslims. Let us inform that on 16 April 2022, Chavhanke hosted a show named ‘Job Jihad’. The teaser of this program was released on 15 April, in which he had made baseless allegations against Jamia without any evidence. A panelist expressed ‘concern’ that entry of Muslims in aviation is ‘dangerous’ for India.

He said, ‘Jamia is not an institution but an organization. It remains in the news for the wrong reasons… We still don’t know what happened to our CDS General Bipin Rawat. The investigation is on. It was clear that his gesture was to target Muslims for this. Let us inform that General Bipin Rawat died in a helicopter crash on December 2021. It was found in the government investigation that the accident happened due to the pilot wandering due to sudden change in weather.

Attack on livelihood of Muslims
This is not the first time that Suresh Chavhanke or Ragini Tiwari has raised such controversy over employment opportunities.

In March 2020, Chavhanke led a protest at India Gate calling for the “economic boycott of rioters” in which, along with Tiwari and Vinod Sharma, a key accused in the Jantar Mantar hate speech case, he described Muslims as “untrustworthy” and called upon Hindus to boycott businesses dominated by Muslims. “If you want to stop them from slitting your throat, then you have to stop donating your money to their ‘green chadar’ now,” Chavhanke said on his channel, when he had organized the protests in the first week of March. In March 2020, a demonstration was held at India Gate led by Chavhanke, calling for an ‘economic boycott of rioters’.

During this, Tiwari and the main accused in the Jantar Mantar hate speech case Vinod Sharma had called Muslims untrustworthy and asked Hindus to boycott Muslim-dominated businesses. Chavhanke had said on his channel while organizing a protest in the first week of March, ‘If you want to stop them from slitting your throat, you have to stop paying money on their green sheet’. Sudarshan News channel, often accused of spreading hatred against Muslims, had reported the case of Uttam Nagar protest in a very provocative manner.

During this entire show, Sudarshan’s reporter Sagar Kumar and anchor Shubham Tripathi kept calling Muslims ‘Jihadis’ and using derogatory words against them. Shubham said in the show, ‘For the first time Hindus have come forward in such an aggressive manner with sticks against jihadis in Uttam Nagar.’ During this, Sagar Kumar said, ‘Today Hanuman Chalisa will be recited in Uttam Nagar and a call for boycott of jihadis will be given. Sudarshan News has been advocating boycott of jihadis for a long time.

क्या शाहरुख़ ने लता दीदी पर थूका हैं? देखे बिंदास बोल @SureshChavhanke ji के साथ। pic.twitter.com/qbmvWx2EnB

— Sudarshan News (@SudarshanNewsTV) February 6, 2022

Abhay Pratap, a columnist for Sudarshan News, wrote, ‘We have come to know that most of these Muslim vendors are Rohingyas, who have committed crimes in the past too.’ Chavhanke also did a series targeting Muslims called ‘UPSC Jihad’, in which Muslims were accused of taking over the Indian bureaucracy. In the affidavit filed in the Supreme Court in the matter, the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry had said that they had warned Sudarshan News to be cautious in future.

However, it seems that Sudarshan ignored this suggestion of the Union Ministry. Recently, a video of Sudarshan News correspondent Shivani Thakur went viral on social media, in which she was seen getting into an argument with an employee of Haldiram’s outlet. She was accusing Haldiram’s packets of hurting the sentiments of Hindus by allegedly using Urdu language during Navratri but in fact these packets were written in Arabic and English language with conditions to comply with international export norms.