Monday, 31 October 2022 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Veteran journalist and author Raj Kanwar passed away at the age of 92 years on Monday. Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and many others have expressed their condolence at the passing away of the prominent resident of Dehradun. Among the oldest active writers in Dehradun, Kanwar began his journalistic journey as the student editor of his college magazine. He had worked as the Dehradun stringer for three leading mainstream newspapers – The Statesman, The Indian Express and The Tribune.
In 1953, he started an English fortnightly and borrowed its name Vanguard from the radical humanist stalwart MN Roy’s international magazine. It was at the Vanguard (which later became a weekly and a daily) that he initially started rattling skeletons in the cupboards of government departments and took up cudgels against the local Ordnance Factory, a venerable defense establishment, the Survey of India et al.
Impressed by his stories as a stringer, the Indian Express offered him the job of a staff reporter in Delhi. In 1959 he joined the Directorate of Public Relations and Tourism, Himachal Pradesh, as its editor. Later, KD Malviya, often described as the father of petroleum industry in India, coaxed him into joining ONGC. Kanwar then became its first public relations officer and was instrumental in setting up its offices both in Gujarat and Assam regions where ONGC then operated. Later, he launched his news weekly Witness in 1964. He then launched a company which was later managed by his son and is into marketing hi-tech products and services to the expanding number of exploration and production companies in the country. In his later years, Kanwar wrote columns in various national and regional newspapers apart from writing books on subjects ranging from the history of ONGC to aspects related to Dehradun.
