HOME

TheInfoList

Click Here for Items Related To - The Times of India

OR:

The Times of India on: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Amazon]

''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language

daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...

and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest selling English-language daily in the world. It is the oldest English-language newspaper in India, and the second-oldest Indian newspaper still in circulation, with its first edition published in 1838. It is nicknamed as "The Old Lady of

Bori Bunder Bori Bunder (also known as Bori Bandar) is an area along the Eastern shore line of Mumbai, India. Background This place was used as a storehouse for goods imported and exported from Mumbai. In the local language, 'Bori' mean sack and 'Bandar' ...

", and is an Indian " newspaper of record". Near the beginning of the 20th century,

Lord Curzon George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, (11 January 1859 – 20 March 1925), styled Lord Curzon of Kedleston between 1898 and 1911 and then Earl Curzon of Kedleston between 1911 and 1921, was a British Conservative statesman ...

, the Viceroy of India, called ''TOI'' "the leading paper in Asia". In 1991, the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

ranked ''TOI'' among the world's six best newspapers. It is owned and published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (B.C.C.L.), which is owned by the Sahu Jain family. In the Brand Trust Report India study 2019, ''TOI'' was rated as the most trusted English newspaper in India.

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was esta ...

rated ''TOI'' as India's most trusted media news brand in a survey. In recent decades, the newspaper has been criticised for establishing in the Indian news industry the practice of accepting payments from persons and entities in exchange for positive coverage.

History

Beginnings

Machinemen, pressmen and sepoys, in The Times of India office in Bombay, November 1898

''TOI'' issued its first edition on 3 November 1838 as ''The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce''. The paper was published on Wednesdays and Saturdays under the direction of Raobahadur Narayan Dinanath Velkar, a Maharashtrian

social reformer A reform movement or reformism is a type of social movement that aims to bring a social or also a political system closer to the community's ideal. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary move ...

, and contained news from Britain and the world, as well as the

Indian Subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

. J. E. Brennan was its first editor. In 1850, it began to publish daily editions. In 1860, editor Robert Knight (1825–1892) bought the Indian shareholders' interests, merged with rival ''Bombay Standard'', and started India's first news agency. It wired ''Times'' dispatches to papers across the country and became the Indian agent for

news service. In 1861, he changed the name from the Bombay ''Times and Standard'' to ''The Times of India''. Knight fought for a press free of prior restraint or intimidation, frequently resisting the attempts by governments, business interests and cultural spokesmen, and led the paper to national prominence. In the 19th century, this newspaper company employed more than 800 people and had a sizeable circulation in India and Europe.

Bennett and Coleman ownership

Subsequently, ''TOI'' saw its ownership change several times until 1892 when an English journalist named

Thomas Jewell Bennett Sir Thomas Jewell Bennett (16 May 1852 in Wisbech – 16 January 1925 in Hans Place, London) was a British journalist and Conservative Party politician. He is most notable as an editor of ''The Times of India'', as well as its principal propriet ...

, along with Frank Morris Coleman (who later drowned in the 1915 sinking of the SS ''Persia''), acquired the newspaper through their new joint stock company, ''Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd''.

Dalmia ownership

Sir Stanley Reed edited ''TOI'' from 1907 until 1924 and received correspondence from major figures of India such as Mahatma Gandhi. In all he lived in India for fifty years. He was respected in the United Kingdom as an expert on Indian current affairs. Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd was sold to sugar magnate Ramkrishna Dalmia of the industrial family, for in 1946, as India became independent and the British owners left. In 1955 the Vivian Bose Commission of Inquiry found that Ramkrishna Dalmia, in 1947, had engineered the acquisition of the media giant Bennett Coleman & Co. by transferring money from a bank and an insurance company of which he was the chairman. In the court case that followed, Ramkrishna Dalmia was sentenced to two years in Tihar Jail after having been convicted of embezzlement and fraud. Most of the jail term he managed to spend in hospital. Upon his release, his son-in-law, Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, to whom he had entrusted the running of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., rebuffed his efforts to resume command of the company.

Jain family (Shanti Prasad Jain)

In the early 1960s, Shanti Prasad Jain was imprisoned on charges of selling newsprint on the black market. And based on the Vivian Bose Commission's earlier report which found wrongdoings of the Dalmia – Jain group, that included specific charges against Shanti Prasad Jain, the Government of India filed a petition to restrain and remove the management of Bennett, Coleman and Company. Based on the pleading, the Justice directed the Government to assume control of the newspaper which resulted in replacing half of the directors and appointing a Bombay High Court judge as the chairman.

Under the Government of India

Following the Vivian Bose Commission report indicating serious wrongdoings of the Dalmia–Jain group, on 28 August 1969, the Bombay High Court, under Justice J. L. Nain, passed an interim order to disband the existing board of Bennett, Coleman & Co and to constitute a new board under the Government. The bench ruled that "Under these circumstances, the best thing would be to pass such orders on the assumption that the allegations made by the petitioners that the affairs of the company were being conducted in a manner prejudicial to public interest and to the interests of the Company are correct". Following that order, Shanti Prasad Jain ceased to be a director and the company ran with new directors on board, appointed by the Government of India, with the exception of a lone stenographer of the Jains. Curiously, the court appointed D K Kunte as chairman of the board. Kunte had no prior business experience and was also an opposition member of the Lok Sabha.

Back to the Jain family

In 1976, during the

Emergency An emergency is an urgent, unexpected, and usually dangerous situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment and requires immediate action. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening ...

in India, the Government transferred ownership of the newspaper back to Ashok Kumar Jain, who was Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain's son and Ramkrishna Dalmia's grandson. He is the father of the current owners Samir Jain and Vineet Jain). The Jains too often landed themselves in various money laundering scams and Ashok Kumar Jain had to flee the country when the Enforcement Directorate pursued his case strongly in 1998 for alleged violations of illegal transfer of funds (to the tune of US$1.25 million) to an overseas account in Switzerland.

During the Emergency

On 26 June 1975, the day after India declared a state of emergency, the

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...

edition of ''TOI'' carried an entry in its obituary column that read "D.E.M. O'Cracy, beloved husband of T.Ruth, father of L.I.Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope and Justice expired on 25 June". The move was a critique of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's 21-month state of emergency, which is now widely known as "the Emergency" and seen by many as a roundly authoritarian era of Indian government.

''The Times'' in the 21st century

In late 2006, Times Group acquired Vijayanand Printers Limited (VPL). VPL previously published two Kannada newspapers, ''Vijay Karnataka'' and ''Usha Kiran'', and an English daily, ''Vijay Times''. ''Vijay Karnataka'' was the leader in the Kannada newspaper segment then. The paper launched a Chennai edition, 12 April 2008. It launched a Kolhapur edition, February 2013.

TOIFA Awards

Introduced in 2013 and awarded for the second time in 2016, " The Times of India Film Awards" or the "TOIFA" is an award for the work in Film Industry decided by a global public vote on the nomination categories.

Editions and publications

''TOI'' is published by the media group Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. The company, along with its other group of companies, known as The Times Group, also publishes ''

Ahmedabad Mirror ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest se ...

'', '' Bangalore Mirror'', '' Mumbai Mirror'', ''Pune Mirror''; '' Economic Times''; ''ET Panache'' ( Mumbai,

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

and

Bangalore Bangalore (), List of renamed places in India, officially Bengaluru (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan area, metropolitan population of a ...

on Monday to Friday) and ''ET Panache'' (

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

and Chennai on every Saturday); ''

Ei Samay Sangbadpatra ''Ei Samay Sangbadpatra'' () is a Bengali-language daily newspaper from The Times Group. It was launched as a broadsheet daily newspaper with a motive to enter into a head-to-head competition with ''Anandabazar Patrika''. It is owned and publi ...

'', (a Bengali daily); '' Maharashtra Times'', (a Marathi daily); '' Navbharat Times'', (a

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

daily). ''TOI'' has its editions in major cities such as Mumbai, Agra, Ahmedabad, Allahabad,

Aurangabad Aurangabad ( is a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the administrative headquarters of Aurangabad district and is the largest city in the Marathwada region. Located on a hilly upland terrain in the Deccan Traps, Aurangabad is the ...

, Bareilly,

, Belgaum, Bhopal,

Bhubaneswar Bhubaneswar (; ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Odisha. The region, especially the old town, was historically often depicted as ''Ekamra Kshetra'' (area (''kshetra'') adorned with mango trees (''ekamra'')). Bhubaneswar is ...

, Coimbatore,

Chandigarh Chandigarh () is a planned city in India. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which a ...

, Chennai, Dehradun,

Gorakhpur Gorakhpur is a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, along the banks of the Rapti river in the Purvanchal region. It is situated 272 kilometers east of the state capital Lucknow. It is the administrative headquarters of Gorakhpur dis ...

, Gurgaon,

Guwahati Guwahati (, ; formerly rendered Gauhati, ) is the biggest city of the Indian state of Assam and also the largest metropolis in northeastern India. Dispur, the capital of Assam, is in the circuit city region located within Guwahati and is the ...

Gwalior Gwalior() is a major city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh; it lies in northern part of Madhya Pradesh and is one of the Counter-magnet cities. Located south of Delhi, the capital city of India, from Agra and from Bhopal, the s ...

, Hubli,

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India ...

Indore Indore () is the largest and most populous city in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It serves as the headquarters of both Indore District and Indore Division. It is also considered as an education hub of the state and is the only city to ...

Jabalpur Jabalpur is a city situated on the banks of Narmada River in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. According to the 2011 census, it is the third-largest urban agglomeration in Madhya Pradesh and the country's 38th-largest urban agglomeration. J ...

Jaipur Jaipur (; Hindi: ''Jayapura''), formerly Jeypore, is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. , the city had a population of 3.1 million, making it the tenth most populous city in the country. Jaipur is also known ...

Jammu Jammu is the winter capital of the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. It is the headquarters and the largest city in Jammu district of the union territory. Lying on the banks of the river Tawi, the city of Jammu, with an area of ...

, Kanpur,

Kochi Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) ( the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of K ...

Kolhapur Kolhapur () is a city on the banks of the Panchganga River in the southern part of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the administrative headquarter of the Kolhapur district. In, around 2 C.E. Kolapur's name was 'Kuntal'. Kolhapur is ...

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and division ...

Ludhiana Ludhiana ( ) is the most populous and the largest city in the Indian state of Punjab. The city has an estimated population of 1,618,879 2011 census and distributed over , making Ludhiana the most densely populated urban centre in the state. I ...

Madurai Madurai ( , also , ) is a major city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Madurai District. As of the 2011 census, it was the third largest Urban agglomeration in ...

, Malabar,

Mangalore Mangalore (), officially known as Mangaluru, is a major port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats about west of Bangalore, the state capital, 20 km north of Karnataka–Ke ...

Meerut Meerut (, IAST: ''Meraṭh'') is a city in Meerut district of the western part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The city lies northeast of the national capital New Delhi, within the National Capital Region and west of the state capital ...

Mysore Mysore (), officially Mysuru (), is a city in the southern part of the state of Karnataka, India. Mysore city is geographically located between 12° 18′ 26″ north latitude and 76° 38′ 59″ east longitude. It is located at an altitude of ...

Nagpur Nagpur (pronunciation: aːɡpuːɾ is the third largest city and the winter capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the 13th largest city in India by population and according to an Oxford's Economics report, Nagpur is projected to ...

Nashik Nashik (, Marathi: aːʃik, also called as Nasik ) is a city in the northern region of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Situated on the banks of river Godavari, Nashik is the third largest city in Maharashtra, after Mumbai and Pune. Nashi ...

Navi Mumbai Navi Mumbai (), is a planned city situated on the west coast of the Indian subcontinent, located in the Konkan division of Maharashtra state, on the mainland of India. Navi Mumbai is part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The city i ...

Noida Noida, short for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, is a planned city located in Gautam Buddha Nagar district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Noida is a satellite city of Delhi and is a part of the National Capital Region (NCR) o ...

Panaji Panaji (; also known as Panjim) is the capital of the Indian state of Goa and the headquarters of North Goa district. Previously, it was the territorial capital of the former Portuguese India. It lies on the banks of the Mandovi river estuary ...

Patna Patna ( ), historically known as Pataliputra, is the capital and largest city of the state of Bihar in India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Patna had a population of 2.35 million, making it the 19th largest city in India. ...

Pondicherry Pondicherry (), now known as Puducherry ( French: Pondichéry ʊdʊˈtʃɛɹi(listen), on-dicherry, is the capital and the most populous city of the Union Territory of Puducherry in India. The city is in the Puducherry district on the sout ...

Raipur Raipur ( ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Raipur is also the administrative headquarters of Raipur district and Raipur division, and the largest city of the state. It was a part of Madhya Pradesh before the state of Ch ...

, Rajkot, Ranchi,

Shimla Shimla (; ; also known as Simla, the official name until 1972) is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared as the summer capital of British India. After independence, the ...

, Surat,

Thane Thane (; also known as Thana, the official name until 1996) is a metropolitan city in Maharashtra, India. It is situated in the north-eastern portion of the Salsette Island. Thane city is entirely within Thane taluka, one of the seven taluk ...

, Tiruchirapally,

Trivandrum Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populatio ...

Vadodara Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district and is situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River, from the state capita ...

Varanasi Varanasi (; ; also Banaras or Benares (; ), and Kashi.) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world. * * * * The city has a syncretic t ...

Vijayawada Vijayawada, formerly known as Bezawada, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and is a part of the state's Capital Region. It is the administrative headquarters of the NTR district. Its metropolitan region comprises N ...

and

Visakhapatnam , image_alt = , image_caption = From top, left to right: Visakhapatnam aerial view, Vizag seaport, Simhachalam Temple, Aerial view of Rushikonda Beach, Beach road, Novotel Visakhapatnam, INS Kursura submarine museu ...

Times Group Network

*''Speaking Tree'': A spiritual network intended to allow spiritual seekers to link spiritual seekers with established practitioners. *''Healthmeup'': A health, diet, and fitness website. *''

Cricbuzz Cricbuzz is an Indian cricket news website owned by Times Internet. It features, news, articles and live coverage of cricket matches including videos, text commentary, player stats and team rankings. Their website also offers a mobile app. ...

'': In November 2014, Times Internet acquired Cricbuzz, a website focused on

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

news.

Criticism and controversies

Paid news

''TOI'' has been criticised for being the first to institutionalise the practice of paid news in India, where politicians, businessmen, corporations and celebrities can pay the newspaper and its journalists would carry the desired news for the payer. The newspaper offers prominence with which the paid news is placed and the page on which it is displayed based on the amount of the payment. According to this practice, a payment plan assures a news feature and ensures positive coverage to the payer. In 2005, ''TOI'' began the practice of "private treaties", also called as "brand capital", where new companies, individuals or movies seeking mass coverage and public relations, major brands and organisations were offered sustained positive coverage and plugs in its news columns in exchange for shares or other forms of financial obligations to Bennett, Coleman & Company, Ltd. (B.C.C.L.) – the owners of ''TOI''. The B.C.C.L., with its "private treaties" program, acquired stakes in 350 companies and generated 15% of its revenues by 2012, according to a critical article in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

''. The "paid news" and "private treaties" practice started by ''TOI'' has since been adopted by ''

The Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media, an entity controlled by the KK Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia. It was founded by Sunder Singh Lyal ...

'' group, the ''

India Today ''India Today'' is a weekly Indian English-language news magazine published by Living Media India Limited. It is the most widely circulated magazine in India, with a readership of close to 8 million. In 2014, ''India Today'' launched a new o ...

'' group, the ''

Outlook Outlook or The Outlook may refer to: Computing * Microsoft Outlook, an e-mail and personal information management software product from Microsoft * Outlook.com, a web mail service from Microsoft * Outlook on the web, a suite of web applications ...

'' group, and other major media groups in India including Indian television channels. This division of the company was later renamed Brand Capital and has contracts in place with many companies in diverse sectors. The "paid news" and "private treaties" blur the lines between content and advertising, with the favourable coverage written by the staff reporters on the payroll of ''TOI''. The newspaper has defended its practice in 2012 by stating that it includes a note of disclosure to the reader – though in a small font – that its contents are "advertorial, entertainment promotional feature", that they are doing this to generate revenues just like "all newspapers in the world do advertorials" according to ''TOI'' owners. According to Maya Ranganathan, this overlap in the function of a journalist to also act as a marketing and advertisement revenue seeker for the newspaper raises conflict of interest questions, a problem that has morphed into ever-larger scale in India and recognised by India's SEBI authority in July 2009. Under an ad sales initiative called Medianet, if a large company or Bollywood studio sponsored a news-worthy event, the event would be covered by ''TOI'' but the name of the company or studio that sponsored it will not be mentioned in the paper unless they paid ''TOI'' for advertising. In 2010, a report by a subcommittee of India's Press Council found that Medianet's paid news strategy had spread to a large number of newspapers and more than five hundred television channels. Critics state that the company's paid news and private treaties skew its coverage and shield its newspaper advertisers from scrutiny. ''The Hoot'', a media criticism website, has pointed out that when a lift in a 19-storey luxury apartment complex in Bangalore crashed killing two workers and injuring seven, all the English language and

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

language newspapers with the exception of ''TOI'' called out the name of the construction company, Sobha Developers, which was a private-treaty partner. An article titled "reaping gold through bt cotton," which first appeared in the Nagpur edition of ''TOI'' in 2008, reappeared unchanged in 2011, this time with a small print alert that the article was a "marketing feature". In both cases, the article was factually incorrect and made false claims about the success of

Monsanto The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in ...

's genetically modified cotton. According to a critical article published in the Indian investigative news magazine ''

The Caravan ''The Caravan'' is an Indian English-language, long-form narrative journalism magazine covering politics and culture. History In 1940, Vishwa Nath launched ''Caravan'' as the first magazine from the Delhi Press; it went on to establish it ...

'', when the

Honda is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a producti ...

Motors plant in Gurgaon experienced an eight-month-long conflict between management and non-unionised workers over wages and work conditions in 2005, the ''Times of India'' covered the concerns of Honda and the harm done to India's investment climate and largely ignored the issues raised by workers. Vineet Jain, managing director of B.C.C.L., has insisted that a wall does exist between sales and the newsroom, and that the paper does not give favorable coverage to the company's business partners. "Our editors don’t know who we have," Jain said, although he later acknowledged that all private-treaty clients are listed on the company's Web site. Ravindra Dhariwal, the former CEO of B.C.C.L. had defended private treaties in a 2010 interview with the magazine ''

'' and claims that the partners in the private treaties sign contracts where they agree to clauses that they will not receive any favourable editorial coverage.

Anti-competitive behavior

There have been claims that ''TOI'' would strike deals with advertisers only if they removed their advertisements from other competitor newspapers. ''TOI'' is also embroiled in an active lawsuit against the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

''. In 1993, when the ''Financial Times'' was preparing to enter the Indian market, Samir Jain, the vice-chairman of B.C.C.L., registered the term "Financial Times" as a trademark of his company and declared it his intellectual property in an attempt to stymie the ''Financial Times'' and prevent them from competing with ''

The Economic Times ''The Economic Times'' is an Indian English-language business-focused daily newspaper. It is owned by The Times Group. ''The Economic Times'' began publication in 1961. As of 2012, it is the world's second-most widely read English-language bu ...

'', which is owned by B.C.C.L. In 1994, when the ''

Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media, an entity controlled by the KK Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia. It was founded by Sunder Singh Ly ...

'' was the top-selling paper in New Delhi, ''TOI'' slashed their prices by a third, to one and a half rupees after having built up their ads sales force in preparation for the price drop to make up for the lost circulation revenue. By 1998, the ''Hindustan Times'' had dropped to second place in Delhi. ''TOI'' took a similar strategy in Bangalore where they dropped the price to one rupee despite protests from

Siddharth Varadarajan Siddharth Varadarajan (born 1965) is a journalist and editor in India. He was a former editor of the English language national daily ''The Hindu'', and is one of the founding editors of the Indian digital news portal The Wire (India), ''The Wi ...

, one of the editors of the newspaper at the time, who called the strategy "predatory pricing".

Cobrapost sting operation

In 2018, Vineet Jain, managing director of B.C.C.L., and Sanjeev Shah, executive president of B.C.C.L., were caught on camera as part of a sting operation by

Cobrapost Cobrapost is a non-profit Indian news website that was founded in 2005 by Aniruddha Bahal – the co-founder of Tehelka. It is particularly known for its undercover investigative journalism. Description According to Kalyani Chadha, Cobrapost ...

agreeing to promote right-wing content through the group's many media properties for a proposed spend of ₹500 crore, some of which the client said could only be paid with black money. B.C.C.L. has responded to the sting claiming that the video that was released by

was "doctored" and "incomplete" and that the CEO Vineet Jain was engaged in a "reverse-sting" of his own to expose the undercover reporter during the filming of the video. The company is yet to release the video evidence.

Notable employees

* Sham Lal, Editor * Girilal Jain, Editor and Scholar * Samir Jain, Vice-chairman Publisher * Vineet Jain, MD * Jug Suraiya (associate editor, columnist, "Jugular Vein," cartoonist, ''Dubyaman II'') * Swaminathan Aiyar (columnist, "Swaminomics") * R. K. Laxman (''You Said It'' editorial cartoon, featuring the famous Common Man) *

M. J. Akbar Mobasher Jawed Akbar (born 11 January 1951) is an Indian journalist and politician, who served as the Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs until 17 October 2018. Akbar is a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha, and was inducted i ...

, Columnist, "The Siege Within" and former Editorial Team *

Chetan Bhagat Chetan Bhagat (born 22 April 1974) is an Indian author, columnist and YouTuber. He was included in Time magazine's list of World's 100 Most Influential People in 2010. Five of his novels have been adapted into films. Family, education, a ...

, Columnist, Sunday TOI *

Shashi Tharoor Shashi Tharoor (; ; born 9 March 1956 in London, England ) is an Indian former international civil servant, diplomat, bureaucrat and politician, writer and public intellectual who has been serving as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, ...

, Columnist of "Shashi on Sunday" * V. D. Trivadi, Humorist *

Twinkle Khanna Twinkle Khanna (also known as Tina Jatin Khanna; born on 29 December) is an Indian author, columnist, interior designer, film producer and a former film actress. In 2015, she released her first non-fiction book, " Mrs Funnybones" which was decl ...

, Columnist of "Mrs. Funnybones" * Swapan Dasgupta, Columnist, Sunday TOI

References

Sources

* * *

External links