Jagjit Singh Dardi

Jagjit Singh Dardi is chairman of the Chardikla media house, which runs the Punjabi daily Chardikla, the Hindi daily Bharat Desh Hamara and the television channel Chardikla Time TV, along with a chain of schools and colleges. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2022 in the field of trade and industry, from Chandigarh ^[1].

A start at twelve

Dardi was born at Kurukshetra on 19 January 1949 ^[2]. His father, Gyani Harnam Singh, was a freedom fighter and Akali leader, and his mother, Harbans Kaur, ran a school in Patiala ^[2]. At 12 he courted arrest in the Punjabi Suba movement of 1960 and began writing news ^[2]. He studied Punjabi at Punjab University and at the Thapar Institute in Patiala ^[2].

Building a media house

In November 1969, for the 500th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, he started Chardikla as a souvenir, then as a fortnightly and a weekly; in May 1977 it became a daily, now among the leading Punjabi dailies ^[2]. In 1985 he launched Bharat Desh Hamara in Hindi and kept it going through the years of militancy in Punjab ^[2].

On Chardikla Time TV he started live telecasts of Gurbani from Gurdwara Bangla Sahib in Delhi in 2007, from Hemkunt Sahib in 2011 and from Takht Sri Harimandir Ji Patna Sahib in 2015, the first such broadcasts from these shrines ^[2]. He has served on the media advisory committees of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha ^[2]. His honours include the Shiromani Sahitkar award of the Punjab government in 1992 ^[2].