One of India's first English news presenter Gitanjali Aiyar passed away on Wednesday, 7 June. With a three-decade-long career as a national broadcaster, Aiyar had joined Doordarshan in 1971 and received the best anchor award four times.
She had graduated from Kolkata's Loreto College and held a diploma from the National School of Drama. Before reading the news on TV, Aiyar was a newsreader on the All India Radio.
In an interview to Scroll.in, Aiyar spoke about the days of DD News. She said, “Once a man came and rang the doorbell to ask me to do something about bringing electricity to the chawl he was living in. Another time, an auto driver in Dehradun would not take any money after dropping me to the school where my son was studying. Many felt we were doing a lot for the nation. It was all very touching.”
After her career in the news industry, Aiyar ventured into corporate communications, government liaison and marketing. In 1989, she won the Indira Gandhi Priyadarshini Award for Outstanding Women.
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