MUMBAI: Veteran journalist and editor Dileep Padgaonkar passed away at a hospital in Pune on Friday afternoon.
Padgaonkar [72] had been hospitalised — first at the Prayag Hospital and then at Ruby Hall clinic — with a kidney ailment last week. He was put on dialysis but he suffered a massive heart attack a couple of days ago. His condition deteriorated thereafter and he breathed his last a few minutes after noon Friday, a close family friend told New Indian Express.
Padgaonkar was a long-time editor of the Times of India and a member of a three-man panel appointed by the government in 2010 to suggest ways to solve the Kashmir problem. He was in 2002 a recipient of the Legion d’Honneur, France's highest civilian distinction, for his services to journalism.
Born in Pune in May 1944, Padgaonkar started his career with the Times of India at the age of 24 as the Paris correspondent of the newspaper. In 1973 he returned to India and served as an assistant editor with the newspaper in Mumbai and then in Delhi. He was its Editor from 1988 to 1994 and held senior positions in the paper until 2005.
For eight years [1978-1986] he worked as an international civil servant in Unesco, first in Bangkok and then at the organization's headquarters in Paris. He has also been the editor of the Sharjah-based daily The Gulf Today. In 1994 he became chairman of the Asia-Pacific Communications Associates [APCA], a multimedia organization active in news and current affairs on TV and in print journalism. He founded Biblio: A Review Of Books and was also its editor.
Padgaonkar was also a member of several national and international bodies, including the Indo-French Forum, the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library Society, the South Asia Free Media Association, the Prince Claus Fund of the Netherlands and the Observer Research Foundation.