Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Jayashree Arunachalam are joined this week by Yunus Lasania, Hyderabad city editor of Siasat.

They talk about “Operation Lotus” in Telangana, allegedly an attempt by the BJP to poach MLAs from Chief Minister K Chandrsekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi party. Yunus is sceptical of the allegations and notes the police’s lack of interest in releasing details of the alleged operation. “TRS is very centralised, no one knows what’s going on inside,” Yunus remarks, referring to Rao’s party by its erstwhile name, Telangana Rashtra Samithi.

The collapse of the Morbi bridge in Gujarat which killed at least 135 people is another subject for discussion. “When someone says don’t politicise a tragedy in a state, that’s a double standard,” says Yunus. “The Centre would have politicised it if it had happened in a non-BJP state.”

They also discuss the recent presidential election in Brazil which returned socialist stalwart Lula da Silva to power after 12 years, the rise and fall and rise again of leftwing and rightwing political movements, and how Twitter discourse shapes the media’s coverage of such movements and moments.

Listen!
Hafta letters: Link languages, Sardar Patel, Abhinandan on AAP