The Lucknow bureau of The Times of India’s (TOI) got a new head early this month on February 10. The previous editor, Raja Bose, has been replaced by Praveen Kumar, who was previously working as the deputy resident editor in the same organisation.
Interestingly, Praveen Kumar is the biographer of incumbent Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The book titled ‘Yogi Adityanath: The Rise of a Saffron Socialist‘ was released on November 26, 2017, at the Times Lit Fest in Delhi. The picture of Yogi Adityanath posing with the book and its author was widely shared.
Soon after the book’s release, TOI transferred Praveen Kumar to Delhi, from Lucknow. Though it was called a ‘routine transfer’, some within the organisation cited Kumar’s closeness to Adityanath as one of the reasons.
A Newslaundry report hinted that the recent replacement of Raja Bose has been due to the Yogi-led government’s issues with his line of reporting. Bose was reportedly removed because of the government’s ‘dissatisfaction’ with the stories done under his editorial leadership.
‘The UP government stopped its payment of advertisements to TOI. The newspaper was publishing government ads but the payment had stopped,’ the sources told Newslaundry. ‘Under pressure, the management decided to remove Raja Bose.’
The news report on the Kashi Vishwanath corridor, published just before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, was one such TOI story that ‘angered’ the UP government. Additionally, Bose and his team had been extensively covering the anti-CAA/NRC/NPR agitations across the state.
