Aveek Sarkar re-elected as PTI Chairman

New Delhi: Aveek Sarkar, the Editor Emeritus and Vice Chairman of the Ananda Bazar Group of Publications, was on Thursday re-elected Chairman of Press Trust of India(PTI), the country's premier news agency.

Sarkar's re-election for a two-year-term took place at a meeting of PTI's Board of Directors following their Annual General Meeting.

K.N. Shanth Kumar, Director of The Printers (Mysore) Pvt. Ltd. which brings out Deccan Herald and Kannada language daily Prajavani, was elected as the Vice-Chairman.

Sarkar, 76, started training as a journalist while he was a student, just out of school. After graduating from the University of Calcutta, he went to Britain where he came under the tutelage of the legendary editor of The Sunday Times, Sir Harold Evans.

He was schooled in journalism by such iconic figures as Edwin Taylor in design and Ian Jack in sub-editing.

As Chief Editor of the Ananda Bazar Group, Sarkar was the moving force behind the transformation of the group's publications, which include Bengali language daily Anandabazar Patrika and English daily The Telegraph, both of which he personally edited.

In addition, the Kolkata-based group also runs six television news channels in various languages, of which the most prominent is the Hindi-language ABP News. The group also publishes a large number of magazines.

Sarkar is a man of varied interests and counts books, food, wine and art among his principal loves. He is a fitness fanatic and spends almost two hours every day on yoga, weights and rowing. He was captain of the Royal Calcutta Golf Club (RCGC) for 10 years.

Sarkar was the founding Managing Director of Penguin India, the Indian counterpart of Penguin Books, the founding Editor of Business Standard and also the pivotal figure behind the acquisition of STAR News by the ABP Group in 2003.

Besides Aveek Sarkar and Shanth Kumar, the PTI Board members are Vijay Kumar Chopra (Punjab Kesari), Vineet Jain (Times of India), N. Ravi (The Hindu), Viveck Goenka (the Express Group), Mahendra Mohan Gupta (Dainik Jagran), Riyad Mathew (Malayala Manorama), M.V. Shreyams Kumar (Mathrubhumi), R. Lakshmipathy (Dinamalar), Hormusji N. Cama (Bombay Samachar), Praveen Someshwar (Hindustan Times), eminent economist Prof. Deepak Nayyar, former Foreign Secretary and NSA Shivshankar Menon, veteran journalist and former Chairman of Business Standard T.N. Ninan and former Executive Director of Tata Sons Ltd. R. Gopalakrishnan.