Turmoil again on ‘Hindu’ board as editor, CEO sacked

Amid turmoil in its board of management, The Hindu - a newspaper widely admired for its conservative and slant-free journalism - on Monday got rid of its editor Siddharth Varadarajan and chief executive officer.

N Ram, chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd (KSL) and publisher of The Hindu and other group publications, said in a communiqué to employees that the two had strayed from the "core values" of The Hindu, and the board had effected "deep-going" top-level changes at the 135-year-old English daily.

After a deeply divided board meeting, Varadarajan was re-designated as contributing editor and senior columnist while Anant was removed from his post. Later in the day, Varadarajan, on Twitter, announced that he had quit. "WithThe Hindu owners deciding to revert to being a family run and edited newspaper, I am resigning from The Hindu with immediate effect," he wrote.

Anant's position, according to a statement issued by the company, will be determined by the 12-member board later.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Ram said that although all directors admitted to "problems" with the leadership of Varadarajan and Anant, six opposed the regime change. "I, with my brother N Murali, am the principal author of the change based on our close observation of the wrong turn of events at The Hindu," Ram said.

The six directors who opposed the move, including K Venugopal and K Balaji, issued a statement saying that "the vote on the said resolution was a tight 6-6 and was passed only with the casting vote of the chairman N Ram."

Calling this "invalid," they said they would "contest the decision through an appropriate mechanism".

Balaji was appointed as managing director in charge of production and business strategy, but has refused to accept the post.

This is not the first turmoil on The Hindu board. Varadarajan's appointment in 2011 as the editor of the 124-year-old daily had triggered the resignations of three members of the family from their senior editorial positions. He was appointed by Ram, after the latter retired from the post on attaining the age of 65 years, and was the first editor from outside the Kasturi family.

Following the changes, N Ravi has taken over as editor-in-chief ofThe Hindu, Malini Parthasarathy, who is the director of The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, has been appointed editor, and Nirmala Lakshman director with oversight of the literature, arts and culture section. Effectively The Hindu has now returned to being a family-run newspaper.

In a statement that the newspaper posted on its website on Monday evening, Ram said that the decision to make the changes was "made chiefly on the ground that there were recurrent violations and defiance of the framework of the institution's long standing values on the business side and recurrent violations and defiance of ... the mandatory Code of Editorial Values applicable to The Hindu.

"There was editorialising in the guise of news and manipulation of news coverage," Ram said, without giving specific instances.

Varadarajan's tenure also saw "loaded items on politicians" and "pieces that should have appeared in the edit pages and not as news stories", Ram said. He also accused Anant of showing a lack of respect of employees, including a "communal approach" at times.

Asked about these allegations, Varadarajan told The Indian Express, "If indeed policies or editorial values were flouted, the solution would have been to get another professional editor. The fact that the owners have come back into editorial (control) itself provides the answer to your question."