The Modi government has been tilting at the windmills for a while now in the face of the monumentally bad publicity they’ve been receiving by those phoren press-wallahs. So, the BBC is out to destroy our culture, CNN is backed by anti-nationals...you get the drift.

Since all of this seems to be failing, they decided today to give up on the windmill, to create some hawa in favour of the dear leader with the help of a phoren-sounding website.

Several ministers, including Amit Malviya, national in-charge of BJP's information & technology department, shared an “article” on Twitter today by the Daily Guardian, an iTV Network daily.

The article was titled “PM MODI HAS BEEN WORKING HARD; DON’T GET TRAPPED IN THE OPPOSITION BARBS”. Phew, we almost didn’t hear that. When you clicked on the link, however, this is what it led to.

You could say irony was screaming in praise of Modi.

Several other Twitter citizens faced the same issue and expressed dismay at being unable to not read a piece that was shared by every other cabinet minister in the Modi government. What if the piece actually told us something that could save the lives of countless Indians or offer some succour in these dreadful pandemic times? Some others speculated on what exactly this Daily Guardian is.

The website is actually not fake. As per details accessed via ICANN, the domain was set up in 2007, but they only set up their profile on Twitter in 2020. It is owned by the ITV network which also owns another newspaper, the Sunday Guardian, which was launched by journalist MJ Akbar. The Sunday Guardian last made news for publishing an opinion piece under a “fake news” category. They did this on the Kathua rape case, so its sister concern’s paeans to Modi is really a much more graceful effort.

A few hours later, when the current piece in question praising Modi finally became accessible, we read it so you don’t have to. Our precious review will be up on Newslaundry soon, because we dare to do things that no one does. On that note, need we remind you to pay to keep news free? But if the wait is killing you, you can take a look at some of the other pieces that passed off as opinion on the website and take a guess.

This piece, for instance, is written by the BJP’s media head in Maharashtra.

And these two are by the BJP’s national spokesperson.

The piece praising Modi is also written by a BJP-wallah: Sudesh Verma, who is the convener of the BJP’s media relations department and represents the party as a spokesperson on TV debates. You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking of the desi Guardian-duo as the last resort for BJP guys who don’t even get published in Swarajya.