Mumbai press club drops sponsor
Two awards for journalists to be presented by the Mumbai Press Club next week had been sponsored by DB Realty whose director was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the 2G scam. The club has now dropped DB Realty’s name from the invite.
By the HOOT desk
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On February 8 the CBI arrested Shahid Usman Balwa, director of Mumbai-based DB Realty in the 2G spectrum case. The Enforcement Directorate had trailed Rs 214 crore allegedly routed by Balwa and DB Realty to Chennai-based Kalaignar TV, a channel promoted by family members of DMK leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. Balwa’s DB Realty had acquired Swan Telecom which bagged 2G licences for 13 circles, reports Rediff.com
This became embarrassing for the Mumbai Press Club which was scheduled to present two awards to journalists, one for best writing on cricket and another on crime on February 15. The awards were being sponsored by DB Realty, for Rs 1 lakh, plus a citation.
On Thursday the club emailed out new invites without the company’s name on it.
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The new invite
Our story published on Wednesday reported:
The award for cricket writing is named after the late KN Prabhu, who wrote for the Times of India, and the crime reporting award after the late Pradeep Shinde who worked for various publications from time to time.
There are other ironies: One of the persons giving away the award is Julio Ribeiro, known as the supercop.The judges for the crime story to be awarded are former Supreme Court Justice BN Srikrishna and former Director General of Police, Maharashtra, Arvind Inamdar. Apparently, the judges would be invitees for the awards event.
The emailed reminder to members asking them to attend the event to be followed by a banquet at a venue elsewhere, not the Press Club itself which is normally the case, says, "For younger journos and reporters there will be a lesson in journalism too from the judges and our celebrity guests. Don't miss the event". It is not clear if DB Realty is picking up the bill for the banquet too.
Will the Press Club cancel the awards? Will the worthies involved as chief guests and judges disassociate themselves from participating in the event and save themselves an embarrassment? Will the Press Club itself abandon the sponsor and seek another? Or manage to rejig the award to meet the costs from its own resources?
It will be interesting to see how they handle this. In these days of scams and paid news, may be going in for sponsored awards is not such a great idea. But quite a few things at the Press Club, Mumbai, including their annual calendars and some facilities, are sponsored by one commercial entity or the other.
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