NEW DELHI: Eminent television journalist and Broadcast Editors Association Secretary General Pankaj Pachauri, who has been associated with the NDTV for almost 15 years and is now its managing editor, has been appointed Communications Advisor in the Prime Minister?s Office.

Pachauri, who will report to the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, will advise on communicating the Government?s programmes, policies and achievements to the media and the public at large, particularly using the electronic, print and new and social media.

A print and broadcast journalist with nearly three decades of editorial experience in print and electronic media, Pachauri, 49, has worked across three continents. He has worked in Delhi, London, Boston and Hong Kong for leading news organisations such as NDTV, BBC (UK), Public Radio International (US), India Today (India and UK), The Sunday Observer and The Patriot.

He has worked for seven years in print media, six years in radio, and 16 years in television broadcasting in Hindi and English.

Pachauri started as a trainee reporter with the Patriot newspaper and soon moved to set up the Delhi edition of The Sunday Observer weekly as a correspondent. He then worked with India Today, as a senior correspondent to report on national politics. He joined the Observer group as its South East Asia correspondent based at Hong Kong. During the Gulf War he reported from the Philippines and Hong Kong on the impact of the war on Asian economies. In 1991 he shifted from print to electronic journalism.

During the 1991 general elections in India, he reported from Lucknow for the NDTV-Doordarshan special election programmes.

Later he moved to London as a producer for the BBC World Service. After broadcasting for BBC?s Hindi radio service, he joined the English newsroom and World Sevice television as a producer and reporter. While in London, he was also contributing editor for India Today?s UK Edition. From BBC?s London headquarters, he became a producer for BBC?s award-winning news and current affairs programme, The World, for global audiences. He was based in Boston at WGBH radio, part of the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). He returned to India in 1997 as BBC-PBS?s India correspondent reporting for The World programme (broadcast globally) and later joined NDTV.

Since 1997 he has worked with NDTV. He is currently managing editor of NDTV India (Special Projects). He hosts many programmes in NDTV, including well known Hum Log and Money Mantra in NDTV India and NDTV Profit.

Early in his career he reported extensively on the aftermath of 1984 communal riots in Delhi. At the peak of the Ayodhya dispute, his reports exposed the divisive forces behind the Babri Masjid campaign. He has reported on each election in India since 1984 to date. He has also reported on every US Presidential since 1988.

His espousal of free, secular and progressive journalism as a reporter, TV anchor and editor based in South-East Asia, Europe, the United States and India has won him several national and international journalism awards.

MUMBAI: Sahara India has appointed Arpit Agarwal as head of its Strategic Management Advisory Group (Media & Entertainment).

Sources in the company confirmed the development.

Prior to Sahara, he was head ? operations at Fremantle India Television Productions since November 2009.

Agrawal comes with over 16 years of experience in media industry in India and Asia Pacific region. He has spent over seven years in NDTV in its creative team. Later, he moved to production business. He also worked in Singapore for four years, working for Bang Singapore and VHQ TV.

In 2008, he joined Miditech as business head and later moved to Balaji Telefilms and head of operations.

Agrawal was not reachable till the filing of this report.

NEW DELHI: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has questioned the deals between the Commonwealth Games 2010 and certain media houses as the Organising Committee (OC) apparently resorted to pick-and-choose policy in the award of contracts worth over Rs 67.3 million.

The CAG in its report has dubbed the process arbitrary and biased. The OC considered proposals in an ad hoc manner and as and when they were received.

The CAG is more severe in its observations on the contract for creating a Games Time website, meant to put out real time information on sporting events, given to HT-Hungama - a consortium comprising Hindustan Times and Hungama. It has lambasted the process of awarding the contract to the consortium and said their work was deficient.
 
The website lacked speed and was not really updated with the latest information, the auditors said.

The website named Korea, Japan, Philippines and the US among the nations participating in the Games - but none of them did - and Commonwealth Games Federation head Mike Fennell went on record, saying that "there is certainly a big problem with the official Games Time website".

The report says a benevolent OC overlooked the non-performance and did not encash the performance guarantee of Rs 2.9 million. A contract in favour of HT-Hungama had no other provisions for penalties case of non-performance, the CAG said.

It said the bidding process was squeezed and completed within two months, leading to several irregularities. Among the three bidders, HT-Hungama‘s documentation was deficient but ignored by the technical committee. It led the CAG to conclude that the process was tailored in HT-Hungama‘s favour.

The contract for production and broadcasting of commercials was given to two news channels, CNN-IBN and NDTV. The CAG said the OC followed an arbitrary approach with no planning for specific channels, time slots and cost benefit analysis.