The post of media advisor to the Prime Minister is much coveted by journalists, past and present, as the very apogee of their careers. A number of worthies have held the title: H.Y. Sharada Prasad, H.K. Dua, Prem Shankar Jha, Harish Khare, Pankaj Pachauri. And there are at least a dozen journalists hoping to be…
Tag Archives: Pankaj Pachauri
Everybody loves writing about Pankaj Pachauri
It is not often that the same piece of political gossip appears in three different newspapers in two different cities on more or less the same day. But in the snakepit of power that is the nation’s capital, it is all in a day’s work, especially if concerns the media advisor to the prime minister,…
Who wrote the Prime Minister’s TV address?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh‘s televised address to the nation on 21 September, the day the Trinamul Congress withdrew support to his Congress-led UPA government over the hike in diesel prices and FDI in retail, has set tongues wagging about its authorship. In her column in the Indian Express, Coomi Kapoor suggests that the media advisor…
Media advisor is second highest-paid in PMO
Life isn’t easy for a public servant in the age of transparency, when every little detail is open to scrutiny under the right to information (RTI). Mail Today, the tabloid newspaper owned by the India Today group, carries a two-page story today on what the prime minister and his key men earn, and it turns…
Brother, sister spar over seat on PM junket
From Delhi Confidential, the gossip column of the Indian Express: FAMILY FRACAS The inclusion of Team Anna member, former TV anchor Shazia Ilmi, in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s media team for his trip to the Rio+20 summit in Brazil, has been the cause of much fuss in the PMO and in the MEA over the…
Is the PM’s media advisor Missing in Action?
Former NDTV Hindi anchor Pankaj Pachauri took over from Harish Khare as prime minister Manmohan Singh‘s media Man Friday barely six months ago. It was seen as a scam- and scandal-tainted UPA’s desperate attempt to reshape the prime minister’s image in the eyes of the media and its consumers. Now, as the economy goes into…
Why Prabhu Chawla didn’t become media advisor
Prabhu Chawla, editorial director of The New Indian Express and Sunday Standard: “Personally, I’m against the idea of journalists associating with the government in a formal advisory capacity without joining the ruling party. When former Prime Minister V.P. Singh offered me his media advisor’s job in 1990, I reluctantly declined. I suggested Singh not to…
At 7, Race Course Road, this is Pankaj Pachauri
In what is perhaps the first acknowledgement of the fact that the UPA government could do with slightly better media schmoozing, Pankaj Pachauri, the host of NDTV Profit’s magazine show, Money Mantra, has been roped in as communications advisor at the prime minister’s office. Pachauri, 48, has previously worked at The Sunday Observer, India Today…
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