Karan Thapar

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Karaṇ Thāpar (Hindi: करण थापर), born on 25th November, 1955 in Srinagar, India, is one of India's noted television commentators and interviewers. Currently the President of Infotainment Television, Thapar is noted for his aggressive interviews with leading politicians and celebrities - his interviews with cricketer Kapil Dev (where Dev broke down into tears)[1], George Fernandes, Jayalalithaa, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, General Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and The Dalai Lama are particularly well remembered by Indians.

Karan Thapar
Karan Thapar

In December 2003, he became the first person to win both awards in the current affairs category of the Asian Television Awards. His interview with Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, on Court Martial won 'The Best Current Affairs Programme'. He received his second award for 'The Best Current Affairs Presenter' for his popular long-running BBC series Face to Face. In 2005 he won the 'Best Current Affairs Presenter' for the third time since 1999 for his interview with former Indian Law Minister and BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley on HARDtalk India. His other popular shows include Eyewitness (Doordarshan), Tonight at 10 (CNBC) now --India tonight--, In Focus with Karan and Line of Fire.

Thapar is also a prolific newspaper columnist. For instance, his weekly column Sunday Sentiments in The Hindustan Times (a leading Indian English daily) is widely read. A collection of his columns has been published by the same name "Sunday Sentiments".

An alumnus of The Doon School and Stowe School, he graduated with a degree in the Economics and Political Philosophy from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1977. In the same year, he was President of the Cambridge Union. He subsequently attained a doctorate in International Relations from St. Anthony's College, Oxford. He began his career in journalism with The Times in Lagos, Nigeria and later worked as their Leader Writer on the Indian subcontinent till 1991. In 1982 he joined London Week and Television where he worked for the next 11 years. He then moved to India where he worked with The Hindustan Times Television Group, Home TV and United Television before setting up his own production house in August 2001, Infotainment Television, which makes programmes for amongst others BBC, Doordarshan and Channel News Asia.

Perhaps his most recent and famous interview has been with the Congress Minister for Human Resources Development Mr. Arjun Singh over the issue of increasing caste-based reservation quotas in all universities and institutions of higher education for the members of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), at the expense of compromising merit. In the Interview with Thapar, at least seven questions were answered by Mr. Singh as "I don’t know" and many others by "I am a servant of the Parliament". The entire interview on IBN can be read here.

Many think that his questions do not hold much value since they are based on media statements and television interviews, which are often with no solid evidence. During his interview with Jayalalithaa on BBC television channel, he didn't have any questions when he was asked by her not to ask questions based on media reports.

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