Scribe wins RedInk award for Aadhaar expose

Rachna Khaira of The Tribune has bagged the prestigious RedInk Award for 'Journalist of the Year' for her expose during 2018 on the functioning of the UIDAI and its Aadhaar data cache.

A statement from the Press Club Mumbai said Khaira's investigation confirmed that personal data of millions of citizens was at a risk of being hacked or traded for a price.

By running a series of stings, the journalist was able to raise serious doubts about the claims by the government that the Aadhar data stored in UIDAI servers was safe and secure.

Many of the leads provided by Khaira became part of public interest litigation (PIL), which finally led to the onerous and mandatory aspects of Aadhaar being watered down, it said.

However, instead of complimenting the journalist for having brought to light the deficiencies of the system, and the threat posed to the privacy of the citizen, the UIDAI launched police action against Khaira, her editor Harish Khare, and the newspaperThe Tribune.

The Mumbai Press Club, which has instituted the RedInk Awards for Excellence in Journalism, has bestowed the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award this year jointly to two retired senior journalists  Dinu Ranadive, 94, who retired from the Maharashtra Times, and photojournalist Sebastian D'Souza, who had served as photo editor of Mumbai Mirror.

Ranadive, who retired as the chief reporter of Maharashtra Times, started his career as the founder-editor of the"Samyukta Maharashtra Patrika"in the 1950s, which had a lasting impact in the movement for the unification of Maharashtra as a state based on language, the release said.

He had also covered the Goa freedom struggle in 1961, the Bangladesh war in 1970-71 and broke stories on cement scandal of 1982.

D'Souza had achieved acclaim for his photographs that captured the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008.

His close-ups of Ajmal Kasab as well as the other heart-rending scenes became viral all over the world.

Earlier, as a photojournalist of the French news agency AFP, Sebastian's coverage of the February-March 2002 Gujarat riots was of outstanding quality, it said.

The faces and the incidents he shot, often taking the risk of moving with rampaging rioters, brought out the horror of communal riots and the pain and suffering they caused.

The RedInk 'Star Mumbai Reporter' award has gone to Mid-Day reporter Ranjeet Jadhav, who has ceaselessly reported on the environmental damage caused to the city by 'aggressive' development activity.

The invasion of the Aarey Colony's green reserve by the construction of Mumbai Metro's loco parking yard is among his portfolios for Calendar 2018, it said.

The managing committee of the Mumbai Press Club had received over nominations.

The winners of the RedInk Awards for the other 12 competitive categories, which includes politics, human rights, crime & investigation, business & economy, etc. will be announced and honoured at the grand finale on June 28 at the Jamshed Bhaba Theatre, NCPA.

The RedInk Awards for Excellence in Journalism were set up nine years ago to encourage good quality reporting and analysis, fair play and high ethical standards in Indian journalism.