More trouble for Tehelka: Majority shareholder to divest 65% stake

Industrialist Kanwar Deep “KD” Singh, who is also a Trinamool Congress MP, and the majority stakeholder in Tehelka through direct and indirect holdings, has decided to exit the venture completely. According to a report in today’s Indian Express, Singh has confirmed that he has around 65 percent stake in Tehelka. “We are going to exit the venture completely. In the past one year, we have divested around 20 percent of it”, the newspaper quotes him as saying. [caption id=“attachment_1250277” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Tarun Tejpal.[/caption] Singh went on to claim ignorance of Tehelka’s day-to-day functioning, and said that he is more “worried about what has happened to Brand Tehelka.” Singh did however say that editor in chief Tarun Tejpal was a “personal friend”, but he had not spoken to him yet. “That’s not the Tarun I know, and Tehelka could have handled this matter better.” Tehelka’s ownership had come under the scanner after the sexual assault case broke a week ago. According to an article in the Economic Times, Tehelka is owned by Anant Media Pvt Ltd, which, as per filings available with the registrar of companies, is a subsidiary of KDS Corporation, a company controlled by Singh. On Thursday, Trinamool Congress spokesperson Derek O’Brien tweeted that KD Singh had clarified to him that he did not own Tehelka. “KD Singh just clarified to me ‘I am not the owner of Tehelka. I have nothing to do with the publication’,” O’Brien tweeted. The TMC spokesperson told ET that he had tweeted what Singh had told him and had nothing further to add on the matter. Since then, O’Brien has deleted his tweet. Earlier this month, the KD Singh Foundation began the Support Cell for Rape Victims Intelligence Unit. “Women play a fundamental role in the development of a country and the least we can do is to provide a just and civil society where they can move without any fear and give their much-valued contribution - socially as well as economically,” KD Singh had said when the support cell was launched.