Rajdeep Sardesai is president, Editors Guild of India

Televisionpoint.com Correspondent | Mumbai
Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief, IBN Network, has been unanimously elected as the president, Editors Guild of India. He succeeds Alok Mehta, chief editor, Nai Duniya, who served for two terms.

K. S. Sachidananada Murthy, resident editor, Malayala Manorama and The Week, was re-elected as secretary-general, and Rohit Bansal, senior editor and COO, India TV, was elected treasurer at the annual general meeting held on November 17. Bansal succeeds Y. C. Halan, who looked after its finances for five terms.

A law graduate from Oxford University, Sardesai worked with Times of India before moving onto television news. He has served as managing editor of NDTV group's news channels. He has won numerous awards for journalism and is a recipient of Padmashri.

The secretary-general, Murthy, began his career with Indian Express and has been part of Malayala Manorama for a quarter of a century. He writes a political column for the newspaper and an anecdotal column for its sister magazine, The Week. He has been vice-chairman of the Lok Sabha Press Gallery Committee, and a member of the Press Council of India. He is now a member of the Central Press Accreditation Committee.

The new treasurer, Bansal, is a specialist in business journalism. He was with Times of India and served as resident editor of Financial Express, New Delhi. In electronic journalism, he has worked with TV18 and Zee News. He was earlier managing editor and executive editor of India TV. He has participated in professional programmes at Harvard Business School, European Journalism Centre and University of Westminster.

The guild is a body of editors of newspapers, news agencies, news magazines and television news channels in the country. It takes up issues of freedom of the press, independence of editors and raising the standards and ethics of journalism. It has evolved a code of practice for journalists.