Honorific-prefix	Her Excellency
Name	Pratibha Patilप्रतिभा पाटील
Office	President of India
Primeminister	Manmohan Singh
Vicepresident	Mohammad Hamid Ansari
Term start	25 July 2007
Predecessor	Abdul Kalam
Office2	Governor of Rajasthan
1blankname2	Chief Minister
1namedata2	Vasundhara Raje
Term start2	8 November 2004
Term end2	23 July 2007
Predecessor2	Madan Lal Khurana
Successor2	Akhlaqur Rahman Kidwai
Birth date	December 19, 1934
Birth place	Nadgaon, Bombay Presidency, British India (now India)
Party	Indian National Congress
Spouse	Devisingh Shekhawat
Alma mater	Mooljee Jetha College, JalgaonGovernment Law College, Mumbai
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Brahma Kumari }}

Pratibha Devisingh Patil () (born 19 December 1934) is the 12th and current President of the Republic of India and first woman to hold the office. She was sworn in as President of India on 25 July 2007, succeeding Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and after beating her rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.

She is a member of the Indian National Congress (INC), was nominated for the presidency by the ruling United Progressive Alliance and Indian Left.

Early life

Pratibha Devisingh Patil was born on December 19, 1934 in Nadgaon village of Jalgaon District, Maharashtra. She got her early education from RR Vidyalaya, Jalgaon and later obtained her Master's degree in Political Science and Economics from the Mooljee Jetha College, Jalgaon. She obtained the degree of Bachelor of Laws from Government Law College, Mumbai. She always took part in sports and won several shields at various inter-collegiate tournaments. Even as a MLA, she pursued her studies as a law student.

Career

Pratibha Patil started her professional career as a practising lawyer at the Jalgaon District Court and worked on various social activities, especially, for the upliftment of poor women.

She was elected for the Jalgaon Assembly constituency when aged 27. She was elected four times consecutively for Muktainagar (formerly Edlabad), Maharashtra, as a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly between 1962 and 1985. Thereafter, she served as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha from 1985 to 1990. In 1991 she was elected as a Member of Parliament in the tenth Lok Sabha, representing the Amravati constituency and stayed in the role until 1996. She has the distinction of not having lost a single election that she contested to date.

She was the 24th Governor of Rajasthan between 2004–2007, and the first woman to hold that office.

Presidential Election 2007

On 14 June 2007, United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the ruling alliance of political parties in India headed by the Indian National Congress, and the Indian left nominated her as their candidate for the Presidential Election to be held in July that year. She emerged as a compromise candidate after the Left parties would not agree to the nomination of former Home Minister Shivraj Patil. UPA chairwoman Sonia Gandhi proposed her: her loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family was widely perceived to be a major factor in her nomination. With the possibility that she might become the first female President of India, Sonia Gandhi described her nomination as a "historic occasion".

Before leaving Jaipur for New Delhi, she thanked Gandhi for choosing her and said that her first job as president would be to make the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) started by UPA a success. In Delhi she asserted that she would not be a rubber stamp president.

She faced Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the NDA candidate, in a straight contest. Her campaign was boosted by the decision of UNPA to abstain from voting.

The Leader of the Opposition, L K Advani, unsuccessfully sought the intervention of Election Commission of India to force Patil to declare her assets.

Shiv Sena, an important ally of NDA, declared its support of Patil on the grounds that she would be the first Maharashtrian to hold the office. This decision caused problems for the BJP-Sena alliance.

Presidency

Name	Pratibha Patil
Dipstyle	Her Excellency Pratibha Patil, President of the Republic of India
Offstyle	President Patil
Altstyle	Madame President }}

She won the presidential election held on 19 July 2007 defeating her nearest rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat by over 300,000 votes. She took office as India's first woman president on 25 July 2007.

Philanthropy

Along with her husband, she set up Vidya Bharati Shikshan Prasarak Mandal, an educational institute which runs a chain of schools and colleges in Amravati, Jalgaon and Mumbai. She also set up Shram Sadhana Trust, which runs hostels for working women in New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune; and an engineering college in Jalgaon. She also founded a cooperative sugar factory known as Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana,muktainager and a cooperative bank named after herself as Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank. The bank ceased trading in February 2003 due to having its license revoked as a consequence of financial irregularities.

Controversies

BJP campaign

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have opposed her in its political campaigning. BJP leader Arun Shourie wrote two articles published as a booklet titled ''Does This Tainted Person Deserve to Become President of India?'', and another BJP leader, Arun Jaitley, announced the launch of a website called ''Know Pratibha Patil'', which contains various media reports and documents concerning the alleged questionable financial dealings of both Patil and her family.

While the BJP tried to build a strong moral opposition to her nomination in 2007, it was advised not to challenge the nomination on legal grounds.

Legal challenges to candidature

A Public Interest Litigation was filed before the Supreme Court of India challenging her 2007 presidential nomination. The claim was referred to the various allegations against Patil and her family members and sought the cancellation of her nomination papers on the constitutional grounds of her being an undischarged bankrupt who had not cleared a debt to the public exchequer and others.

The court ruled that it could not act on unsubstantiated allegations, and rejected the petition as being without merit at the admission stage. Furthermore, it queried the intention of the petitioner and said that it was more of a "private interest litigation". The court ruled:

The petitioner then approached the Election Commission of India seeking her disqualification. The Election Commission response was that:

Following this, the petitioner again approached the court, contending that the Election Commission had not applied its mind to the matter, and sought quashing of the commission's order.

In another case a Delhi-based NGO has also filed a petition before the Delhi High Court alleging that Patil being Managing Trustee of Mumbai-based Shram Sadhana Bombay Trust, which is under the control of state government, was holding the office of profit making her ineligible to contest the President's election. The High Court deferred the hearing until after election.

Refutation

The leaders of Indian National Congress and Indian left tried to repudiate these charges. They have also said that these issues have never been raised in the past while she was a deputy chairwoman of the Rajya Sabha, or during her tenure as a governor. They accused the BJP of launching a "malicious, unsubstantiated and deliberate" slanderous campaign just to damage her reputation. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh defended Pratibha Patil and dismissed the charges as "mud-slinging". On Monday 2 July 2007 breaking her silence Patil described the allegations leveled against her as "false, malicious and baseless".

Prominent allegations against her that have been controversial are:

Allegations of shielding her brother on a murder charge

On 22 June 2007, Rajni Patil, a professor at a Jalgaon college, claimed that Pratibha Patil's brother G.N.Patil was the person who had murdered her husband, Jalgaon congressman Vishram G Patil. She accused Pratibha Patil of shielding her brother. She further said that she had provided details of her allegations to Sonia Gandhi and President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. Copies of her letter to the President were distributed to the press by Sudheendra Kulkarni, an aide of Leader of the Opposition L. K. Advani.

On 13 July 2007 Rajani Patil petitioned the Bombay High Court, demanding that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigate Pratibha Patil and her brother in connection with the allegations before the presidential election. The court directed the CBI accordingly in order to remove the possibility that presidential immunity might come into play if Prabitha Patil were elected.

The lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani said that two CDs have surfaced which contain incriminating material against Patil's brother. The CDs contain footage of the elections for the district Congress presidentship in Jalgaon. Jethmalani offered to place both CDs on record, saying "These contain vital information showing the political link behind the murder."

Pratibha Women Cooperative Bank

Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank was a cooperative bank set up by Patil in 1973 to empower women. The license for it to operate as a bank was revoked in 2003 by the Reserve Bank of India for alleged financial irregularities. Among the irregularities listed were the loans policy of the bank and loan interest waivers given, among others, to Patil's relatives. Patil was one of the chairpersons of the bank and a number of her relatives were also directors.

She is currently one of 34 respondents in a legal case at the Bombay High Court relating to allegations of mismanagement of the bank and misappropriation of funds by its directors.

In her defence, her supporters point out that she was not the founding president of the bank, and that she held the job of the chairwoman for a little over a month. They also point out that the RBI has never mentioned Patil's name in the report, and the court has not charge-sheeted her. Communist leader A.B. Bardhan cast doubts on the credibility of the official employees' union of the bank, which has been highlighting the issue of mismanagement since 2002, drawing attention to the fact that it is associated with the BMS union led by the BJP.

Sant Muktabai Cooperative Sugar Factory

A cooperative sugar factory – Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana – of which Pratibha was a founder member, was declared a defaulter for failing to repay a Rs 17.5 crore (Rs 175 million) bank loan. Pratibha Patil had been its chairwoman and director until she became the Governor of Rajasthan. The loan was taken in 1994 when Pratibha was its chairwoman, but the factory has failed to repay the full amount. The bank sealed the factory on 23 January 2007 after issuing many reminders. This was the second occasion the mill had been sealed. Earlier, it was sealed in January 2006, but was reopened after the board of directors headed by G. N. Patil - younger brother of Pratibha Patil - requested for an opportunity to improve the performance of the mill.

In 2002 the chief commissioner of central excise and customs, Pune, issued notice to the factory for evading excise duty resulting from diversion of export-oriented sugar by the factory into domestic market.

Dubbing as "malign campaign" the allegations, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, defended Pratibha and noted that there was never any enquiry under Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act against her. He also pointed out that as many as 74 mills were issued notices in December 2006, and it was "unfortunate that only one particular case has been brought up in the media". Pawar said most of the mills had failed to repay the loans because of persistent drought affecting sugarcane production, leading these mills to go sick.

Nevertheless in 2007, Manohar Lal Sharma, an independent advocate, filed a public interest litigation petition in the Supreme Court alleging that Mrs Pratibha Patil was an undischarged insolvent relating to the Sant Muktabai Sugar Factory and hence disqualified to remain in the office of the presidency.

Party loyalty

In February 2011, Rajasthan state minister Amin Khan addressing a meeting of the district INC party was quoted by the local media as saying Pratibha Patil was rewarded with the presidency because "she used to make tea and cook food at Indira Gandhi's residence" without expecting anything in return. Khan later said that he was misquoted and did not mean any disrespect, and resigned from his post over the controversy.

Shrama Sadhna Trust

MPLADS

It was alleged that as a Member of Parliament for Amravati between 1991 and 1996 Patil diverted Rs 36 lakh (Rs 3.6 million) from her MPLADS fund to a trust run by her husband Devisingh Shekhawat. This was in violation of Government rules which barred MPs from providing funds to organisation run by their relatives.

Views on sterilisation

On 10 December 1975, when she was the Health Minister of Maharashtra, Patil advocated in Maharashtra Assembly that people with hereditary diseases should be compulsorily sterilised.

Divine indication

Patil claims to have spoken to the spirit of the deceased leader (Baba Lekhraj) at their headquarters in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.

"''Dadiji ke shareer mein baba aye ... Maine unse baat ki'' (Baba entered Devi’s body and he communicated to me through her)," she said on TV camera. Reporters began to report on the message she received of a "divine indication" of great responsibility coming her way.

Positions held

Period	! Position
1967-72	Deputy Minister,N.H.E.A.,Scav, Public Health, Prohibition, Tourism, Housing & Parliamentary Affairs, Government of Maharashtra
1972-74	Cabinet Minister, Social Welfare, Government of Maharashtra
1974-75	Cabinet Minister, Public Health & Social Welfare, Government of Maharashtra
1975-76	Cabinet Minister, Prohibition, Rehabilitation and Cultural Affairs, Government of Maharashtra
1977-78	Cabinet Minister, Education, Government of Maharashtra
July 1979 to February 1980	Leader of Opposition, CDP (I), Maharashtra Legislative Assembly
1982-85	Cabinet Minister, Urban Development and Housing, Government of Maharashtra
1983-85	Cabinet Minister, Civil Supplies and Social Welfare, Government of Maharashtra
18 November 1986 to 5 November 1988	Deputy Chairman, Rajya Sabha
1986-88	Chairperson, Committee of Privileges, Rajya Sabha; Member, Business Advisory Committee, Rajya Sabha
1991-96	Chairperson, House Committee, Lok Sabha
8 November 2004-June 2007	Governor of Rajasthan
25 July 2007 to date	President of India

See also

Devisingh Ransingh Shekhawat

Indian presidential election, 2007

Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank

Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana

References

|- }} |-

Category:1934 births Category:Current national leaders Category:Female heads of state Category:Governors of Rajasthan Category:Indian National Congress politicians Category:Indian women in politics Category:Living people Category:Maharashtra politicians Category:Marathi people Category:Presidents of India

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name	Arun Shourie
birth date	November 02, 1941Jalandhar, India
occupation	Politician
profession	Journalist & World Bank Economist
alma mater	St. Stephen's College, DelhiSyracuse University
party	Bharatiya Janata Party
spouse	Anita
children	}}

Arun Shourie (अरूण शौरी) (born 2 November 1941) is an Indian journalist, author, intellectual and politician. He has been an economist with the World Bank (1968–72 and 1975–77), a consultant to the Planning Commission, India, editor of the ''Indian Express'' and ''Times of India'' and a minister in the government of India (1998–2004). He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1984. He is an atheist .

Early life

Arun Shourie was born in Jalandar, British India. His father was Hari Dev Shourie, an Indian civil service officer (ICS), who later became a consumer rights activist. His father was a magistrate at Lahore during partition of India and the family moved to India. Arun studied at Modern School, Barakhamba and St. Stephen's in Delhi. He obtained his doctorate in Economics from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University in the United States. His sister Nalini Singh is a journalist.

Career

In a series of exposés, many of which he wrote himself, Shourie and the Indian Express, where he became Executive Editor in January 1979, uncovered corruption in the highest echelons of the government and exposed several major scandals, including what has been dubbed “India’s Watergate.” Shourie started a one-man crusade in 1981 against Abdul Rehman Antulay, the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra State, who allegedly extorted millions of dollars from businesses dependent on state resources and put the money in a private trust named after Indira Gandhi. The story caused the eventual resignation of the chief minister and great embarrassment to Gandhi and her ruling Congress Party.

Shourie's exposés resulted in a prolonged labour dispute at the Mumbai offices of the Indian Express, where a labour organizer with ties to Antulay encouraged workers to strike for a minimum wage double than what was paid at any other newspaper in India. It also resulted in a government crackdown that included a host of legal cases launched against the Indian Express by various agencies. In 1982, the paper's owner Ramnath Goenka fired Shourie as a result of continued government pressure.

Between 1982 and 1986, Shourie wrote for various newspapers and magazines, at the same time as being General Secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties. He was appointed executive editor of the ''Times of India'' in 1986 but was lured back to the ''Indian Express'' by Goenka in 1987. Shourie launched an attack on then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi over the Bofors howitzer gun purchase scandal. This contributed to Rajiv Gandhi's defeat in the subsequent parliamentary elections.

Among the many battles Shourie fought for press freedom, perhaps the most famous was his crusade against the government’s proposal in 1988 to introduce a defamation bill. It was widely perceived that the bill had been introduced with unusual speed in the Parliament in an attempt to muzzle the ''Indian Express'', and the entire media community joined Shourie and the ''Indian Express'' in condemning the move.

At one stage, there were 300 cases filed by the government against the ''Indian Express'', and credit supply from banks was cut off. Shourie, however, continued his battle against government corruption until 1990, when differences on editorial policy forced him to resign from the ''Indian Express''. The differences involved Shourie's opposition to the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, that sought reservations in government jobs for Other Backward Classes (OBC), which were initiated by then Prime Minister V.P. Singh's government. After that, he devoted his energy to writing books and regular columns, which appeared in different languages in 30 newspapers across India.

Shourie is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has been a member of the Rajya Sabha and also held the office of the Minister of Disinvestment, Communication and Information Technology in the Government of India under Atal Bihari Vajpayee's prime ministership. As Disinvestment Minister, he led the sale of Maruti, VSNL, Hindustan Zinc among others. His position as Minister was a controversial one, but he and his secretary Pradip Baijal are much respected for kick-starting what people believe was a best-in-class process. In a poll of India’s top 100 CEOs in February 2004, he was ranked the most outstanding minister of Mr.Vajpayee’s government.

Shourie was one of the loudest voices opposing the nomination of Pratibha Patil as the President of India in 2007. Arun Shourie authored two articles published as a booklet titled 'Does This Tainted Person Deserve to Become President of India?' in which he discussed the highly questionable past of the Congress candidate. In a detailed interview with Karan Thapar, Shourie gave voluminous proofs accusing Pratibha Patil and her kin of embezzling funds from Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank,a bank which she had founded and was in charge of. Reserve Bank of India (RBI), revoked the licence of the bank in 2003 after it was found out that the bank had illegally waived interest on loans given to many of Pratibha Patil’s family members. Shourie also accused her of obstruction of justice and in a murder case against her brother G.N.Patil.

After the defeat of BJP in 2009 General Elections, Arun Shourie was one of the voices, besides Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh, within the BJP demanding introspection and accountability. Matters came to a flashpoint after the expulsion of senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh because of his book praising Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Shourie defended Jaswant Singh in his articles in the ''Indian Express'' and accused the former BJP Party President Rajnath Singh of high handedness using such choice phrases as "Humpty Dumpty" and "Alice in Blunderland".

Personal life

Shourie is married to Anita Shourie, and they have one son.

Publications

Arun Shourie has written about 26 books.He is known for his well-researched and thought provoking writings.His writings have gained him a considerable following around the country, as well as several national and international honours. Among these are the Padma Bhushan, the Magsaysay Award, the Dadabhai Naoroji Award, the Astor Award, the K.S. Hegde Award and the International Editor of the Year Award and The Freedom to Publish Award.

In ''Does He Know a Mother's Heart?'' Arun Shourie discusses the perennial question that has grappled mankind since eternity:"If there is a kind,compassionate,all-knowing God,how can there be extreme suffering in this world?".Shourie analyses various religious scriptures in his quest for the answer to this question.The book is a also a personal narrative of a father whose son has been suffering from Cerebral Palsy since childhood(Shourie's son Aditya is now 34 years old)and of a husband whose wife is a Parkinson's Disease patient.The personal narrative is particularly heart wrenching.

In ''We Must Have No Price'', which is a collection of his articles published earlier in The Indian Express, and of his speeches in the Rajya Sabha and several lectures that he delivered at IIT Kanpur and elsewhere,Shourie presses for reforms in the Higher Education sector, in the economic sector and in political parties (specifically BJP, the party to which he belongs).

In his book ''Worshipping False Gods'', Shourie criticized B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of Dalits for alleged complicity with the British and lust for power and wealth.

In ''A Secular Agenda'' (1997, ISBN 81-900199-3-7), Shourie discusses various problems faced by India due to minority appeasement and pseudo-secularism practiced by the Indian politicians. The book starts with a discourse on the definition of a nation. He cites examples of other nations in Europe to counter the arguments of people who do not consider India as one nation due to its different lanuguages and religions. He argues for a Uniform Civil Code in the book and the abolition of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. He also discusses the problem related to infiltration from Bangladesh and the inability of the Indian government to solve it.

''Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud'' (1998, ISBN 81-900199-8-8) discusses the NCERT controversy in Indian politics and attacks Marxist historiography. Arun Shourie asserts that Marxist historians have controlled and misused important institutions like the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the National Council of Educational Research Training (NCERT) and a large part of academia and the media. He criticizes well-known historians like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib. Shourie argues that Marxist historians have white-washed the records of rulers like Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb. Shourie presents examples to further his argument of how many of these text books describe in great detail foreign personalities like Karl Marx or Joseph Stalin, while they often barely mention important figures of India or of the Indian states. Shourie writes that this is in contrast to Russian Marxist text books. The standard Soviet work ''A History of India'' (1973) is according to Shourie much more objective and truthful than the history books written by the Indian Marxists.

''Falling Over Backwards: An essay against Reservations and against Judicial populism:'' Shourie examines the history of reservations as to why they were originally introduced, the relevant sections in the Indian Constitution and the reasoning behind the exact words used. He then cites the rulings of courts to emphasise on the degeneration of judiciary from an upholder of the original values to openly flouting them. He examines how the Constitution was generously interpreted by consecutive court rulings to arrive at conclusions completely opposite to what the Constitution makers originally intended. He cites exact rulings and judgements to make his point. He then proceeds to discuss the introduction of reservations in promotions, the Rooster System, the arrival at the 50% limit and the subsequent flouting of it. Next, he proceeds to the logic behind the Mandal recommendations and the basis on which the same were made. He then examines the base of the commissions rulings, i.e., the 1931 census (the last time caste based census was held in India), and showcases how the findings, ambiguous to begin with by the census takers' own admissions, was conveniently used by the commission. In the final part of the book, Shourie examines the effects of reservations in bureaucracy and elsewhere, citing specific examples and cases to highlight the absurdness that has set in and its adverse effect on the institutions. He discusses the future that the trend portends, and makes ominous predictions if the slide is not stopped. Shourie ends by quoting Nehru's remarks on reservations 'This way lies not folly, but disaster.'

''Governance and the sclerosis that has set in:'' Arun Shourie discusses the rot prevelent in the bureaucracy and the inordinate delay that accompanies every task. Various cases are cited along with their timeline and their motion through the various channels bringing home the inefficiency of the structure. Shourie also discusses certain incidents involving his stint as the Disinvestment minister in the Vajpayee Government. Lack of efficacy of various state governments, PSU's and departments is also discussed. Shourie suggests doing away with obsolete legislation and simplifying the processes.

''The World of Fatwas or the Sharia in Action:'' Arun Shourie discusses the concept of fatwas, the premises surrounding the sharia code of laws, its universality and how it is being used as a tool to keep the Muslim masses in a state of agitated isolation. He exposes the secular view of Islam's institutions and its ''ulemas'' in India as being incomplete and shrouded in hypocrisy. He discusses the need of a concerted program of reform headed by Muslim Liberals to vitiate the deleterious effects of the all pervading power of the ''ulema''. He also touches upon some contemporary issues such as the Shah Bano case and dissects the response of the ''fundamentalists'' as being symptomatic of the view of women as second class citizens propagated by the Quran and the Hadis. The book also focusses on the conflict between the world view advocated by the ''fatwas'' and that of Modern science.

Bibliography

Does He Know a Mother's Heart?

We Must Have No Price

Are We Deceiving Ourselves Again

Where Will All This Take Us

The Parliamentary System

Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Falling Over Backwards: An essay against Reservations and against Judicial populism

Governance and the sclerosis that has set in

Harvesting Our Souls

Hinduism: Essence and Consequence

Indian Controversies

Individuals, Institutions, Processes : How One may Strengthen the Other in India Today

Institutions in the Janata Phase

Missionaries in India

Arun Shourie and his Christian critics

Mrs Gandhi's Second Reign

Only Fatherland : Communists, 'Quit India,' and the Soviet Union

Religion in Politics

A Secular Agenda

Symptoms of Fascism

These Lethal, Inexorable Laws: Rajiv, His Men and His Regime

The State As Charade: V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar and the Rest

Will the Iron Fence Save a Tree Hollowed by Termites?

Worshiping False Gods

The World of Fatwas

Co-author:

with Sita Ram Goel, Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi and Ram Swarup, Hindu Temples - What Happened to Them Vol. I, (A Preliminary Survey) (1990, ISBN 81-85990-49-2)

with Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst, Ram Swarup, ''Freedom of expression - Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy'', Voice of India (1998).

with Arun Jaitley, Swapan Dasgupta, Rama J Jois, Harsh Narain''-The Ayodhya Reference:Suprema Court judgment and commentaries'', Voice of India(1994)

{| | | | | | | | | |}

IIT Kanpur

Arun Shourie was elected from Uttar Pradesh for his two successive tenures as Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (1998–2004 and 2004–2010).In the year 2000, Shourie pledged the entire amount (Rs. 11.90 crore) of discretionary spending available to him under Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) to setting up of Bio-Sciences & Bio-engineering Department at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. In 2005, he displayed his commitment to the cause by again pledging Rs. 11 crore for developing a separate and well-equipped building for Environmental Sciences and Environmental Engineering at the institute.

References

External links

Image source

A short collection of Shourie excerpts

Interview with Karan Thapar for CNN IBN on the issue of the nuclear deal

Interview with Karan Thapar for CNN IBN on the issue of reservations

Interview at rediff.com

Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:Indian atheists Category:Punjabi politicians Category:Bharatiya Janata Party politicians Category:Indian journalists Category:Indian writers Category:Alumni of St. Stephen's College, Delhi Category:Investigative journalists Category:Recipients of the Padma Bhushan Category:Indian anti-communists Category:World Bank Category:People from Jalandhar Category:Members of the Rajya Sabha Category:Ramon Magsaysay Award winners Category:University of Delhi alumni

hi:अरुण शौरी kn:ಅರುಣ್‌ ಶೌರಿ ta:அருண் ஷோரி te:అరుణ్ శౌరీ

name	Karan Thapar
birth date	November 05, 1955
birth place	Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, India
age	46
education	Pembroke College, CambridgeSt Antony's College, Oxford
occupation	News Anchor of CNN-IBN & CNBC-TV18
years active	1985 – present
gender	Male
credits	''Devil's Advocate''''India Tonight''''The Last Word''Face to Face (BBC)Hardtalk India (BBC) }}

Karan Thapar (Kashmiri/Hindi: करन थापर; born 5 November 1955) is one of India's noted television commentators and interviewers. He is the youngest child of General P. N. Thapar and Mrs. Bimla Thapar.

Thapar has long been criticized for not letting his interviewees have their say and for frequently interrupting them as they speak. There is no give and take approach in his interview rather he forces his opinions even though he is wrong.

Education

An alumnus of The Doon School and the Stowe School, he graduated with a degree in Economics and Political Philosophy from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1977. In the same year, he was also President of the Cambridge Union. He subsequently obtained a doctorate in International Relations from St. Antony's College, Oxford.

Career

He began his career in journalism with ''The Times'' in Lagos, Nigeria and later worked as their Leader Writer on the Indian subcontinent till 1981. In 1982 he joined ''London Weekend Television'' where he worked for the next 11 years. He then moved to India where he worked with ''The Hindustan Times Television Group'', ''Home TV'' and ''United Television'' before setting up his own production house in August 2001, Infotainment Television, which makes programmes for amongst others BBC, Doordarshan and Channel News Asia.

Currently the President of Infotainment Television, Thapar is noted for his aggressive interviews with leading politicians and celebrities- his interviews with cricketer Kapil Dev, George Fernandes, J. Jayalalithaa, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, General Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto, Arun Jaitley, Ram Jethmalani, U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and The Dalai Lama are particularly well remembered.

A few of his shows which have been much watched and appreciated are ''Eyewitness'', ''Tonight at 10'', ''In Focus with Karan'', ''Line of Fire'' and ''War of Words''. The shows with which he has been making headlines lately are, ''Devil's Advocate'' and ''The Last Word'' on CNN-IBN and ''India Tonight'' on CNBC TV 18.

Awards and accolades

In December 2003, he became the first person to win both awards in the current affairs category of the Asian Television Awards. His interview with Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, on ''Court Martial'' won 'The Best Current Affairs Program'. He received his second award for 'The Best Current Affairs Presenter' for his popular long-running BBC series ''Face to Face''. In 2005 he won the 'Best Current Affairs Presenter' for the third time since 1999 for his interview with the former Indian Law Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) General Secretary Arun Jaitley on ''Hardtalk India''. He won the 'Best Current Affairs Presenter' award yet again in 2007, this time for his much talked about interview with Ram Jethmalani on ''Devil's Advocate''. In 2008 ''Devil's Advocate'' was conferred 'Best News/Current Affairs Show' by News Television Awards & Karan Thapar was presented the award for 'News Interviewer of the Year' by Indian News Broadcasting Awards. In April 2009 he was honored with the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award and was chosen the 'Journalist of the Year (Broadcast)'. In August 2009 he was adjudged the "News Show Host of the Year" by Indian News Broadcasting Awards. In March 2010 Devil's Advocate was accorded an award for being the "Best News Talk Show" by News Television Awards. In December 2010 he was adjudged the 'Best Current Affairs Presenter' by Asian Television Awards. He won this award for an interview with Ram Jethmalani on ''Devil's Advocate'' which had terminated abruptly as Jethmalani had walked out in anger midway when questioned about allegations of opportunism surrounding his return to a political party. In March 2011 ''Devil's Advocate'' was adjudged the "Best Current Affairs Programme" and Karan Thapar was declared the "TV News Anchor of the Year-English" by National Television Awards.

Controversies

R. Prasanan criticized Thapar's interview with Gohar Ayub Khan for its hidden motives. Narendra Modi and Ram Jethmalani have famously walked out of the show complaining about Thapar's style of interviewing them. In a year-end role-reversal interview of Karan Thapar, Arun Jaitley accused Thapar of being soft on his interviewees from Pakistan like Asif Ali Zardari when compared to Indian politicians. In a similar role-reversal interview with Karan Johar, Thapar acknowledged a continuing tiff with the Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan arising from an interview in which Thapar posed certain personal questions to the actor. In a separate interview with Mani Shankar Aiyar, Thapar named his interview with A. R. Rahman as the most unsatisfactory one till date.

Books

''Face To Face India - Conversations With Karan Thapar'', Penguin, ISBN 0-14-303344-1

''Sunday Sentiments'', Wisdom Tree, ISBN 81-8328-023-4

''More Salt Than Pepper - Dropping Anchor With Karan Thapar'', Harper Collins, ISBN 978-81-7223-776-9

Notes

External links

Karan Thapar interviews former Indian Minister of External Affairs on Peace with Pakistan

Karan Thapar wins 'Best Current Affairs Presenter' in 2005

Karan Thapar wins Two Asian Television Awards in ''The Hindu''

Karan Thapar talks to Outlook India

Jayalalitha's Interview to BBC World's HARDtalk India

Karan Thapar Interviewed by Karan Johar

Karan Thapar Interviewed by Arun Jaitley

Karan Thapar Interviewed by Mani Shankar Aiyar

Karan Thapar sparks off a debate in China

Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:Indian people Category:Doscos Category:Old Stoics Category:Presidents of the Cambridge Union Society Category:People from Srinagar Category:Indian opinion journalists Category:Indian television journalists

kn:ಕರನ್ ಥಾಪರ್ ml:കരൺ ഥാപ്പർ mr:करण थापर