Shekhar Gupta Reminisces When Two Indian Newspapers ‘Colluded’

The senior journalist recollects how ‘The Pentagon Papers’ inspired him to save a story from being killed.

Much has been written and said about the famous Pentagon Papers in popular media. Recently, Steven Spielberg’s The Post too, tackled the same incident. But have you ever heard of a similar story closer home? When one publication handed over their story to another, just to ensure that the story sees the light of day? Senior journalist, Shekhar Gupta, who was the editor-in-chief at The Indian Express for 19 years, shares how he was inspired to pull off a similar move from ‘The Pentagon Papers’ incident on The Print.

Since enough time has passed, I can now talk in some detail about how ‘The Pentagon Papers’ became an inspiration for something unusual we did at The Indian Express in the winter of 2006. Or, even at the risk of giving some suspense away, what was done between The Indian Express and The Hindu, together. 

Shekhar Gupta

Gupta mentions that while the two papers were not direct rivals, they “competed furiously in the realm of ideas and philosophies, particularly economic and strategic policies”.

In his narrative in The Print, Gupta recounts an incident in November 2006, when an investigative reporter at The Indian Express, Ritu Sarin, broke two brief stories. The stories were about the then President APJ Abdul Kalam objecting to the elevation of Delhi High Court’s Justice Vijender Jain as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court because of some collegium members’ reservations.

Each time, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked him to consult the Chief Justice of India, YK Sabharwal, who insisted that the appointment should go through. Kalam was persistent. He returned the file for the third time. This time, he did something no President had as yet done—and I am not sure has done subsequently. He wrote, in two succinct paras his reservations. He said, in the consultative process, three senior judges had raised doubts on the appointment. Further, that to still push it through, the size of the collegium had been increased by a judge, which was against the procedure. 

Ritu Sarin had managed to access a copy of the former President’s note regarding the selection. But before The Indian Express could publish the story, “catastrophe struck”. Along with other irregular or unlicensed buildings being sealed and demolished in Delhi, The Indian Express office in Qutub Institutional Area, too, was sealed on 18 November 2006. “We were suddenly homeless” recounts Gupta.

Worse, however, was the realisation that we could no longer publish the story with Kalam’s note. How could a paper ever publish a story “against” the judge whose orders had just locked it out of its newsrooms?

Gupta says they consulted every top lawyer in the country who all had the same advice.

They all figured the issue, but had the same advice: You can’t publish. It will be seen as vengeful and be a possible case of contempt. So here we were, working literally from the pavement and our homes, with that never-before wrench: Having a story we couldn’t publish.

Gupta recollects that while flipping through a paperback edition of Benjamin Bradlee’s ‘A Good Life’, the solution to the problem struck him. He then called N Ram, the then editor-In-chief at The Hindu and discussed the situation with him.

Ram said he and I might conclude this at Mani Shankar Aiyar’s daughter Yamini’s wedding lunch-reception in Delhi for which he was coming. We met on the lawns of Aiyar’s bungalow. I pulled out a rolled printout from my jacket and handed it to him. In the cut-throat world of journalism, this was like high treason. But letting a story be killed because you can’t publish it is a bigger crime than passing it to the competition.  

Gupta mentions that the story made it to the front page in the next morning’s The Hindu. The reporter of the story had also quoted a key collegium judge anonymously in the story.

The CJI still insisted on going through with Justice Jain’s appointment as chief of Punjab and Haryana High Court. But that was between him and Kalam. It was never our objective to block the appointment.

Gupta says it’s not known if the story in The Hindu had any impact on the choices the collegium made for the Supreme Court subsequently.

We were only obsessed with a most important and factual story that had “Must Publish” written on it. That it was published is a tribute to the large-heartedness of The Hindu and N Ram. The inspiration — if not instigation — had come from ‘The Pentagon Papers’.