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'Chandan Mitra' is editor and managing director of The Pioneer newspaper in Delhi and an independently elected (but BJP-supported) Member of the Rajya Sabha or Upper House of the Indian Parliament. He is known to be part of a group of right-wing journalist-intellectuals in Delhi, which includes Swapan Dasgupta among others.
Mitra did his schooling from La Martiniere College, Kolkata and graduated in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University where he was a batchmate of Shashi Tharoor and Swapan Dasgupta among others, he even served as Tharoor's Chancellor when Tharoor was elected as President of the College Union. Mitra was a distinguished debator and a noted Marxist in College. After graduating, Mitra did his MA and M.Phil in History also from Delhi University. He taught for a short while at Hansraj College. He then went to Magdalen College in Oxford University where he did his Doctorate in Modern Indian history and did his doctoral thesis on the Indian freedom movement in Eastern UP and Bihar.
He started his career in Indian journalism as an Assistant Editor with The Statesman in Kolkata before he moved to the Times of India in Delhi. Following this he joined The Sunday Observer and went on to become Editor of the paper which was funded by Reliance Industries. After Reliance stopped funding, Mitra moved to the Hindustan Times as Executive Editor. However, after he was sidelined by V.N Narayanan who moved in as Editor, Mitra left to join The Pioneer and eventually bought control of the newspaper from the Thapar family after industrialist Gautam Thapar decided to cut his losses. In an interesting twist of fate, it was The Pioneer which published a damning article which exposed Narayanan as a plagariser. Mitra has somewhat turned around the paper and ventured into other areas, including a media school.
He is married to Shobori Ganguly, who is his second wife. He has two sons from a previous marriage. His elder son, Kushan Mitra, is also journalist.