Mush breakfast brews trouble in Editors' Guild

NEW DELHI: Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf's visit may have brought India one step closer to peace with its neighbour but it has created an uproar in the Editors' Guild of India. Angry over the manner in which invitations were sent out to the editors for the breakfast meeting with the General organised by the Guild, its secretary-general and treasurer have resigned.The Guild's secretary-general, Om Thanvi, and treasurer Y C Halan allege they were not consulted by president M J Akbar while drawing up the list of invitees. "It was done arbitrarily. Certain non-members were invited to the meeting while many significant members were left out. As an office-bearer, I take offence to this and have tendered my resignation," said Halan who himself was not invited to the event last Monday. In his resignation letter, Thanvi sought to know the criteria on which some individuals were invited while others were left out. Thanvi posed a few questions in his resignation letter to Akbar: "Why were there two editors from a single magazine? Why was there no invitee from an important newspaper group like the Ananda Bazar Patrika? Why was the proprietor of an English daily invited and not the editor who is an old member of our Guild? And why one TV channel was allowed to do a live telecast of the meeting to the exclusion of other channels including Doordarshan?" When contacted, Akbar tried to play down the matter. While refusing to get in to the specifics, he said: "There is some misunderstanding which will be addressed in our next meeting. As there were security issues, we could not have changed the list of invitees after it was sent out. Because of this, we could not have accommodated last minute requests and changes." Having sent a copy of his resignation to all member editors, Thanvi said he was waiting for Akbar's reply. "I do not want to comment on the issue as it is the internal matter of the Guild," he said.