New Delhi: After a month of high drama, including an emergency meeting and several expulsions, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia (FCC) has reconstituted its Governing Committee (GC) with new members.
According to a statement shared with ThePrint, the journalists who have accepted the GC’s invitation to join it include K.P. Nayar, a foreign correspondent and a TV commentator on diplomacy, and Moses Manoharan, editor-in-chief of the foreign affairs journal Global Dialogue Review.
Its special invitees include The Indian Express’s contributing editor on international affairs C. Raja Mohan, The Economic Times’s executive editor Pranab Dhal Samanta and diplomatic editor Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury, and an editor at the Times of India, Rudroneel Ghosh, among others.
Rules say that the GC should consist of no less than five and no more than 12 members. The committee manages the club’s activities under the guidance of the president and general secretary.
“The FCC is happy to have on board some of the finest journalists in India and abroad. I am confident that the FCC will benefit immensely from their contribution,” S. Venkat Narayan, the club’s president, told ThePrint.
The FCC is a group of more than 500 journalists and photojournalists covering India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Afghanistan, and Tibet.
Tensions at the club began on 4 October when an emergency meeting of the managing committee, attended by eight members, unanimously passed a no-confidence vote against veteran journalist Narayan, vice-president Waiel Awwad, a senior international independent journalist from Syria, and general secretary Prakash Nanda. The club’s managing committee comprises 11 members, including the president, vice president, and general secretary.
They were accused of exceeding the budget set for a convention of the International Association of Press Clubs (IAPC)—a collaboration of over 40 small clubs across more than 35 countries—and lack of transparency in conducting the club’s day-to-day activities.
Foreign affairs analyst Simran Sodhi and Arab News’ India correspondent Sanjay Kumar were named as the interim president and interim general secretary, respectively.
However, the ‘ousted’ members came together and conducted an investigation, ThePrint had earlier reported.
They found that, of eight members who backed the vote of no confidence, two were ‘forced’ to sign the resolution and the membership of one had allegedly expired in March this year, leaving him ineligible to vote or sign any resolution. “This brings your so-called majority down to five and, therefore, a minority,” Narayan said in letter to Sodhi and Kumar dated 15 October and seen by ThePrint. They were “expelled” by the club’s governing council (GC) on the basis of these findings.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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