The News Minute’s co-founder and editor-in-chief Dhanya Rajendran has been awarded the 2022 National RedInk Award for ‘Journalist of the Year’ by the Mumbai Press Club. Dhanya has been bestowed with the award for leading her team in exposing the tampering of voter data in Karnataka ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections. Along with Dhanya, independent journalist Sharad Vyas has also been granted the award of ‘Journalist of the Year’.
The Journalist of the Year Award, a recognition for path-breaking journalism in the year 2022, is an integral part of the Redink Awards for Excellence in Journalism instituted by the Mumbai Press Club 12 years ago. In the past, journalists including Srinivasan Jain of NDTV 24X7, Raveesh Kumar of NDTV India, Raj Kamal Jha of Indian Express, Faye D’Souza of Mirror Now, the late Danish Siddiqui of Reuters have been honoured with the ‘Redink Award Journalist of the Year’ for their long and consistent service to the profession.
Announcing the award, the Mumbai Press Club said, “Dhanya led a team of journalists who did a series of investigations during the Karnataka elections that confirmed what had been suspected all along – that the election process in India is not always free and fair.”
In November 2022, Dhanya led The News Minute’s investigation of electoral data fraud in Karnataka, a state that was going to the polls in April-May 2023. The investigation resulted in the Election Commission ordering a review of voter lists in three constituencies in Bengaluru. It also led to the arrest of Krishnappa Ravikumar, the director of Chilume, the NGO behind this voter data fraud. Further, the local government ordered that no private organisation can collect voter data.
The Mumbai Press Club’s statement said, “The investigation uncovered a working prototype of how the electioneering process can be tampered with and then illustrated it through one constituency in Bengaluru to show how voter data was being manipulated.”
Read: TNM investigation: Armed with govt order, Bengaluru NGO steals voter data
Dhanya has worked as a journalist for over 20 years, in print, television, and digital news organisations, covering important and ignored news from south India throughout her career. Her focus on women’s rights, child sexual abuse, politics and elections, climate disasters, and human rights issues in general has helped get attention for several important stories at a national level.
Dhanya co-founded The News Minute in 2014, to ensure that south India is covered from the south, by south Indian journalists. Since then, she has put the spotlight on issues affecting the southern states that national media has often ignored — whether it’s floods, or eroding federalism.
Co-recipient of the ‘Journalist of the Year’ award Sharad Vyas “unearthed and published how the Indian Government's Intelligence Bureau imported the spy software Pegasus from an Israeli company, which had been officially denied all along.”
Veteran journalist, columnist and author Neerja Chowdhury was awarded the RedInk ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award “for her contribution of over four decades as a reporter and analyst of political affairs and government.”
The awards were presented by Swantatra Senani GG Parikh and former Additional Solicitor General of India Indira Jaising in Mumbai on Saturday, December 2, at the Royal Opera House.