Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s day out at the iconic Times Square in New York received contrasting coverage from traditional rival media outlets ‘Janmabhoomi’ – party organ of the BJP and Kairali TV – the CPI-M- backed Malayalam TV channel.
Vijayan and a tour party consisting of his wife, top political leaders was in the US to attend the three day meeting of the regional meeting of Loka Kerala Sabha at New York, which ended on Sunday evening.
Janmabhoomi reported that it turned out to be a damp squib and all the hype of thousands of people attending the event fell flat. To buttress their claims of that they came out with an aerial picture at the time when Vijayan was addressing the event at the Times Square.
But Kairali TV said it was a resounding success and a mammoth crowd had gathered to hear Vijayan speak and many expressed surprise on the negative publicity that was done by a section of the media.
Incidentally a huge controversy had broken out in the run-up to the event after news surfaced that one has to shell out a minimum of $50,000 if one has to get a seat with Vijayan and have dinner with him.
Many were surprised to hear Vijayan speak on Friday in New York to say if they had paid any money to take part in the event and slammed the leading vernacular daily here for spreading canards about his event in the US.
Loka Kerala Sabha was formed by Vijayan soon after he took over in 2016 and is basically a meeting of the diaspora.
–IANS