Shekhar Gupta Delhi, India

Shekhar Gupta is one of India’s best-known political journalists and serves as Chief Executive Officer and an Editor-in-Chief of Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd. (formerly Indian Express Group). He leads the nation’s largest network of award-winning journalists, whose work has effected change in several areas, including government policy and legislation.

Shekhar himself has some of the most significant news-breaks in contemporary Indian journalism to his name. As a young reporter, aged only 26, he exposed the horrific Nellie massacre in Assam that marked a watershed in the North-East’s ethnic conflict. As a reporter and then an editor with India Today, India’s largest news magazine, he uncovered LTTE training camps in India and exposed lies by official intelligence agencies in a spy scandal that falsely implicated scientists of the Indian Space Research Organization. Seven years before 9/11, he travelled across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany, the US and the UK, to report extensively on the threat from Islamic fundamentalism, including its links with Osama bin Laden.

Shekhar’s weekly column, called National Interest and now in its ninth year, has become a touchstone for new ideas in politics, governance, society, business and sports. He also hosts an interview-based programme, Walk the Talk, on NDTV 24×7, India’s most watched and respected English news channel.

Shekhar has authored several books, including India Redefines Its Role (Oxford University Press, 1995). His newspaper won the Vienna-based International Press Institute’s first India Award for Outstanding Journalism in the Public Interest.