Former Statesman Editor Sunanda Datta-Ray receives IJA Lifetime Achievement award

London, Nov 28 (IANS) Sunanda Datta-Ray, former editor of The Statesman, was conferred the 2017 IJA Lifetime Achievement Award, instituted by the Indian Journalists' Association in Europe.

The IJA award goes to either an Indian foreign correspondent who has worked out of Britain or a British foreign correspondent who has worked out of India.

The award was conferred at a dinner in London on Monday night.

Datta-Ray worked as the London correspondent of The Statesman as well as the India correspondent of The Observer. He was a unanimous choice of the IJA executive committee. Previous winners include S. Nihal Singh, also an erstwhile editor of The Statesman, and the late Sir Charles Wheeler, BBC correspondent in India.

Datta-Ray was editor of The Statesman at a time when this paper was the leading daily in eastern India as well as much respected in Delhi. He was thereafter editorial consultant to The Straits Times of Singapore. He has also contributed extensively to the International Herald Tribune. Among his books is "Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India".

Indian High Commissioner Yash Sinha, Indian Minister Nitin Gadkari, and Ashis Ray, president of IJA Europe, were present.

IJA was founded on May 19, 1947 and is commemorating its 70th anniversary this year. The award ceremony was a culmination of several events, which began with Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley launching the celebration, an Indian Independence Day dinner at which British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was the chief guest and finally the dinner on Monday attended by Gadkari and the British Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling, according to an IJA release.