Locked gate, coup claims, rival presidents: Inside the Foreign Correspondents’ Club’s leadership battle

Locked gates, a police complaint, show cause notices, two competing sets of office bearers, and the accusation of a “coup” –  the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in Delhi has seen perhaps its most eventful week. 

It began on October 4, when eight of the nine members of the international journalists body’s managing committee held an “emergency meeting”, without three key office bearers. President Venkat Narayan, general secretary Prakash Nanda, and vice president Dr Waiel Awwad claimed that they were not invited, but those in attendance maintained that the invitation had been sent.

The club has over 500 journalists and photojournalists covering India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Afghanistan, and Tibet and serves as “an important meeting point for far-flung travelling journalists”.

In the meeting on October 4, the eight members passed a no confidence vote against the incumbent office bearers and appointed Simran Sodhi as the interim president and Sanjay Kumar as the interim general secretary “with immediate effect”. 

But the ousted office bearers called it illegal and a “coup”. The next day, several of them convened their own emergency meeting and issued show cause notices to Sodhi and Kumar. 

Meanwhile, the two new recruits accused the former office bearers of locking the FCC gates on Monday and barring them access to the premises. They also submitted a complaint to the Delhi police commissioner, urging the police to file an FIR.

Now, both factions are claiming to be in charge. While the earlier faction has been issuing notices using the official FCC letterhead, the new body has control of the FCC’s social media handles and has been tweeting developments from their standpoint.

This turmoil comes months after 10 foreign journalists, including those with publications such as the Washington Post, Financial Times, and the Economist, resigned from the club last year after alleging that Venkat Narayan had “irrevocably destroyed” their trust in the club’s ability to represent their interests.

Trigger for escalation

The two warring factions have justified their actions citing the FCC’s constitution. 

Simran Sodhi’s panel claimed that the FCC constitution allows for the removal of office bearers by the general committee under “certain circumstances”. However, Prakash Nanda told Newslaundry that no GC meeting can be convened without the president. 

“The office bearers can only be removed by the AGM. In this case, it is clear that the meeting they held and the decisions coming out of it are illegal,” he said. “There is no change in the leadership. We remain the legitimate officer bearers.”

A committee member who was present in the October 4 meeting told Newslaundry that tensions had been brewing for more than a year-and-a-half. Ten foreign journalists quit the club in June last year over Narayan’s three-day Myanmar visit, during which he shared his “perspective” on “editorial content” with a military junta-led newspaper. 

Additionally, differences had been brewing among members regarding the planning of this year’s convention for the International Association of Press Clubs – a body of over 40 clubs across more than 35 countries with the FCC among the members.

While the club’s members are required to contribute for the event, including the hotel accommodation for guests, several members complained that they were not kept informed and an excess sum of money was being spent. 

A member, on the condition of anonymity, said, “They are behaving like this event is a personal affair. If you’re hosting a huge delegation, the managing committee members should be kept in the loop, but they did not do so. Only after we asked, they said there is a steering committee member who is working on it.”

‘Lack of transparency’

Sanjay Kumar alleged that it was the “highhandedness and lack of transparency” by Narayan and Nanda that had led to the latest series of events. 

“What happened on October 4 was a culmination of what has been happening in the club for the last year and a half,” Kumar said. “There was a lack of transparency in conducting the club’s day-to-day activities. The final straw was the managing committee being kept in the dark about the organisation of the IAPC.” 

He also claimed that acts like these had compelled many expat journalists to quit the body last year. “The majority of the foreign journalists left the club after Venkat accepted the Mayanmar junta’s invitation and went there without taking the club into confidence.” 

“FCC without foreign journalists loses its name and character. We wanted Venkat Narayan to reach out to the Delhi-based foreign journalists, but he never did. FCC failed to stand by foreign journalists when they were expelled or asked to leave the country by the government. Narayan and Nanda had failed in their duty to take up the welfare and wellbeing of the foreign journalists with the government.”

‘Planning transparent’

Venkat Narayan, however, said the planning has been transparent. He said the FCC secretary had already informed the club during the July AGM about the upcoming IAPC convention and that the estimated expenditure of Rs 3 lakh had been approved.

In a show cause notice sent to Sodhi and Kumar, viewed by Newslaundry, Narayan said that due to several journalists’ engagements for covering the ongoing wars in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, and the US elections, many delegates who wanted to attend the IAPC assembly in New Delhi were not able to confirm their participation, and thus, they could not provide the IAPC headquarters in Warsaw with the dates for the assembly in Delhi.

“We have yet to receive a complete list of delegates. And not a single paisa has been spent on this score so far. Your claim that you were not informed is totally false,” Narayan wrote in the letter.

He accused Sodhi of writing to the IAPC headquarters and several of its member press clubs, claiming that funds meant to be spent on hosting the IAPC assembly had been misused by the president and vice president. 

Sodhi, however, claimed that a fake email ID with her name had been created to send these mails by one Pankaj Yadav.

A notice and police complaint

The show cause notice sent to Sodhi and Kumar by Narayan, on behalf of the GC, gave them seven days’ time to explain their involvement in “activities that are detrimental to the interests of the club”. 

Narayan said that if they did not receive a response, “prompt action” would be taken against the two for “indulging in activities that are detrimental to the interests of the club”. The letter was printed with the official FCC letterhead. 

“It is preposterous that you should arrogate to yourselves the authority to call a GC meeting and make baseless and ridiculous charges against the office bearers elected at the AGM in 2023 for a two-year term. Your meeting is illegal, and your allegations are ridiculous and false.”

In response, Sodhi and Kumar wrote a complaint to the police commissioner, saying that “few individuals claiming to be the managing committee locked the gate of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club and did not allow members to come inside”.

They claimed that the allegedly expelled members had, on Monday, “through some external help captured the club and locked it from inside” and that they had “threatened the staff too”. They demanded that an FIR be lodged against Narayan and Nanda for the “grave violation”.

“All this is not good as it is ruining the reputation of the club and should be sorted internally,” said an FCC member. “It’s a fight between two groups for control of the club, but it is wrong that this is the turn it is taking. People come here thinking it’s a club of foreign journalists, but I don’t think there is any foreign journalist left in the club anymore; just Indian journalists writing about foreign affairs or for international publications.”

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