Three journalists have been specially felicitated for their services from the North East at the 10th edition of the North East Festival being held at the Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi.

The three journalists are Deepak Dewan, Rajkumar Leishemba and Asish Gupta.

Asish Gupta, presently working as the Delhi Bureau Chief of Asomiya Pratidin, for almost four decades. Gupta has been in the field of journalism. He also worked for television news program Khas Khabor and for many Bangladesh media houses. Gupta is also known as a prominent human rights activist in India and associated with PUDR, Delhi.

The next journalist, Deepak Dewan is one of the very few non-Northeast origin journalists covering the region for more than four decades. Dewan has seen the Assam agitation and the sufferings of the people which he wrote in a four-part series 'Assam is Burning' in Sun Magazine after his visit to Assam in 1982.

In 1987, Mr Deepak Dewan started a 16 page pull out 'North East Sun', then a section in the Sun Magazine. In 1994, North East Sun was born as a separate edition and soon became the voice of North East. It also became an institution for the budding journalists of the entire North East Region.

Deepak Dewan edited ‘North East Sun’ till 2019 and thereafter he is regularly seen on the national TV news channels debating on the various issues of the Northeast region and the people.

On the otehr hand, Rajkumar Leishemba is an environmental toxicologist by qualification and a journalist by profession, hailing from Manipur’s Imphal.  He has over 25 years of experience as a journalist. He began his career in journalism with a local newspaper titled ‘The Freedom Manipur’, while pursuing graduation in Imphal in the mid 1990s.

He then took a break to complete Masters in Environmental Toxicology from University of Madras.

He then entered the national media space as an intern with ‘The Pioneer’ in New Delhi. Leishemba went on to work with other media houses, including The Times of India, Ahmedabad, Strategic Newspapers, Mumbai, The Financial Express, New Delhi and Dow Jones Newswire.

He is currently an Associate Editor with the Press Trust of India, writing on the corporate sector.

Notably, Union Minister for MSME, Narayan Rane inaugurated the “MSME Exhibition” at the 10th Edition of North East Festival in New Delhi on Friday.

The festival began on December 23 and will end on December 26. The festival showcases best of northeast region’s culture, food, tourism potential, art and more.