Neerja Chowdhury is an Indian journalist, columnist and political commentator. Chowdhury was the political editor of the Indian Express for ten years, and is currently a contributing editor for the Indian Express. [1]
In 1981 Chowdhury won the inaugural Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediapersons. [2] In 2009 she was awarded the Prem Bhatia Award. [3]
Neerja Bhanot was an Indian flight purser. On 5 September 1986, she saved a large number of passengers onboard Pan Am Flight 73, which had been hijacked by four Palestinian terrorists from the Abu Nidal Organization after it made a stopover at Jinnah International Airport in Pakistan. Around 17 hours into the standoff, after she opened an emergency exit door and began helping passengers escape from the plane, Neerja was shot and killed by the hijackers, two days before her 23rd birthday. Shortly afterwards, Pakistan's Special Service Group stormed the aircraft and captured all of the hijackers. Posthumously, Bhanot became the first female recipient and, until 2003, the youngest recipient of the Ashoka Chakra, the highest peacetime gallantry award of India. She also received the Tamgha-e-Pakistan, the 4th highest civilian award of Pakistan, in addition to several accolades from the United States. Her life and humanitarian actions inspired the 2016 Indian Hindi-language biographical film Neerja, directed by Ram Madhvani and starring actress Sonam Kapoor.
Sucheta Dalal is an Indian business journalist and author. She has been a journalist for over two decades and was awarded a Padma Shri for journalism in 2006. She was the Financial Editor for the Times of India until 1998 when she joined the Indian Express group as a Consulting Editor, leaving in 2008. She is known for exposing the 1992 stock market scam propagated by Harshad Mehta.
Alok Mehta is an Indian journalist, TV broadcaster and writer. In 2009, he received the civilian honour of Padma Shri from the Government of India. Mehta's work has focused on issues of social welfare, including education for minorities and healthcare facilities.
Praveen Swami is an Indian journalist and author specialising on international strategic and security issues. He is currently the Group Consulting Editor at Network18 Group. He was the Diplomatic Editor of The Daily Telegraph newspaper between September 2010 – October 2011, after which, he became the National Editor of The Indian Express newspaper from August 2014- January 2017. Swami is the author of two books on the India-Pakistan conflict in Kashmir. He was described by the BBC as "one of India's foremost experts of Islamist terrorism".
Tarun Tejpal is an Indian journalist, publisher, novelist and former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine. In November 2013, he stepped down as editor for six months after a female colleague accused him of sexual assault. On 21 May 2021, a Goa trial court presided over by Justice Kshama Joshi acquitted him of all charges.
Neha Dixit is an Indian freelance journalist, covering politics, gender and social justice. She is a visiting faculty at Ashoka University and has been awarded with the Chameli Devi Jain Award (2016) as well as CPJ International Press Freedom Award (2019).
Pushpa Girimaji is an author, journalist, consumer rights columnist and consumer safety advocate. She is the only Indian journalist to have written a weekly consumer column continuously for over three decades.
Patricia Mukhim is an Indian social activist, writer, journalist and the editor of Shillong Times, known for her social activism. A recipient of honours such as Chameli Devi Jain award, ONE India award, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry FLO award, Upendra Nath Brahma Soldier of Humanity award, Siva Prasad Barooah National award and North East Excellence award, she was honored by the Government of India, in 2000, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.
Anubha Bhonsle is an Indian TV and print journalist and an author. She currently works as Executive Editor of CNN-News18.
The Wire is an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu. It counts among the news outlets that are independent of the Indian government, and has been subject to several defamation suits by businessmen and politicians. In 2022, one of its reporters fabricated several news stories, and was then fired.
The Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Mediaperson is an Indian journalism award named after Chameli Devi Jain, an Indian independence activist who became the first Jain woman to go to prison during India's independence struggle. The award was instituted in 1980 by The Media Foundation and is given to women in the field of journalism. According to Business Standard, the award is "perhaps India's longest running media award for women".
Arfa Khanum Sherwani is an Indian journalist, and the senior editor of The Wire. She was the only Indian journalist to cover the 2014 Afghan presidential elections. She is an alumna of Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia. She has received the Red Ink Award and the Chameli Devi Jain Award.
Shahina K. K., alternatively KK Shahina or Shahina Nafeesa, a veteran Indian journalist who has worked across print and broadcast media to shed light on issues such as gender, human rights, and marginalized communities, along with the injustices they face. She is a Senior Editor Outlook Magazine, and a contributor for The Washington Post. She is among the four winners of the CPJ International Press Freedom Awards this year from different continents all over the world. She is the fourth Indian to achieve this recognition. She was conferred with the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediapersons in 2011. She is also a participant as an activist in the Kiss of Love movement against moral policing in India. Based in the state of Kerala, she is frequently cited by various mainstream media networks on issues related to gender equality and women's rights.
Rohini Mohan is an Indian journalist and writer, currently working independently. In 2019, she was the recipient of the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediaperson. Her first book, The Seasons of Trouble (2014) won the Shakti Bhatt Prize in 2015, and the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award.
Uma Sudhir is an Indian journalist, who is the executive editor of the South Indian division of the television news network NDTV. Sudhir has been the recipient of a number of awards including the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award and the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediapersons.
Sevanti Ninan is an Indian journalist, columnist, researcher and media critic. She is the founding editor of The Hoot, which was the first media watchdog in India. Ninan was the recipient of the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediapersons in 1989, and is a visiting scholar (fellowship) at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, an academic center associated with the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the author of the book, Headlines from the Heartland which is described as the first in-depth study into the growth of the expanding Hindi language newspaper industry in India.
Prem Narain Bhatia was an Indian diplomat and journalist who travelled the world with India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Befriended by Nehru and his successors, notably Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi, he served as political editor of The Statesman (1957–58), editor of The Tribune, Ambala (1959), Delhi editor of The Times of India(1960–62), editor The Indian Express 1963–65, then a diplomat for two decades; He was India's High Commissioner to Kenya 1965–69, and to Singapore 1969–73. Returning to journalism as editor The Tribune, Chandigarh 1977–86.He graduated with a first class degree in English from Government College,Lahore,before giving up a place at Oxford to start his professional career as a reporter on the Civil and Military Gazette newspaper in Lahore.The Prem Bhatia Memorial Trust Award is named in his honour.
Kalpana Sharma is an Indian journalist, editor, and writer. Currently freelance, she has worked with several Indian dailies, including The Indian Express, The Times of India, and The Hindu, where she was a deputy editor and chief of the Mumbai bureau. In 1987, she received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediapersons. She has written and edited several books of reportage from India, including Rediscovering Dharavi (2000), which consists of reporting about Dharavi, a large slum in the city of Mumbai, India, and The silence and the storm: narratives of violence against women in India.
Chameli Devi Jain was an Indian independence activist who became the first Jain woman to go to prison during India's independence struggle.