On Saturday, July 24, the All India Trinamool Congress took to its Twitter account to announce the nomination of Ex-IAS Jawhar Sircar in the Upper House of the Parliament.

Jawhar Sircar, 69, who worked for 42 years as a civil servant and even went on to serve as India's cultural secretary and CEO of Prasar Bharati, also served as the Vice President of the All-India Tennis Association.

An old image of Jawhar Sircar (right) with then British Prime Minister David Cameron
An old image of Jawhar Sircar (right) with then British Prime Minister David CameronTwitter/Jawhar Sircar

Of late, he has been in the public eye for strongly and vocally criticizing the Modi government. In March 2020, a press statement released by Prasar Bharti, signed by employees and journalists condemned Sircar's then tweet calling the national broadcaster 'Prachar Bharti' and questioning the integrity of the public news platform.

Reacting to Sircar's nomination news, Agnivo Niyogi tweeted, "Nomination of Jawhar Sircar as Trinamool Rajya Sabha candidate also shows how clueless the mainstream media (specially NCR based) is about Bengal. They were doing stories after stories on Mukul Roy and Yashwant Sinha being frontrunners while Didi sprung a rabbit out of her hat."

"Make jokes on the Prime Minister & you immediately get a Rajya Sabha Seat!! This is what the opposition has reduced the nation's apex Parliamentary institution to!" tweeted BJP worker Priti Gandhi.