Rohit Sardana


Rohit Sardana is an Indian journalist, editor, columnist, anchor and media personality. He had hosted Taal Thok Ke, a debate programme which discusses contemporary issues in India on Zee News. He left Zee News to join Aaj Tak in 2017, and now he hosts the debate show Dangal. He is a recipient of the 2018 Ganesh Vidyarthi Puraskar Award.

Early life and education

Sardana was born in Kurukshetra, Haryana, India. He did his secondary schooling from Gita Niketan Awasiya Vidyalaya, Kurukshetra, Haryana. He has a bachelor of arts degree in psychology. From 2000 to 2002, Sardana completed his academic work to earn a post-graduate degree in mass communication from Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology.
Sardana married Pramila Dixit and is blessed with two daughters.

Career

From March 2002 to July 2003, Sardana worked as a copy-editor. As a trainee copy-editor, Sardana was exposed to the technicalities of anchoring, copywriting, editing, production and post-production work. Along with learning these skills, Sardana studied the functioning of a 24-hour news channel. Sardana worked as an assistant producer at Sahara Samay from 2003 to 2004.
Since 2004, Sardana was with Zee News in the capacity of an executive editor, anchor, news presenter and host for the network's Hindi language programmes. He is now a senior anchor at Aaj Tak. Sardana formerly worked with the ETV Network and Akashvani. He hosts a show called Dangal on Aaj Tak which features debate panels. The show has been compared to Radio Rwanda and he has been accused of demonising Muslims, encouraging jingoism and strengthening the Hindu-Muslim binary through his show.
Sardana formerly produced Karmakshetra, among the first Hindi-language news programmes whose primary objective was reporting, for an Indian audience, the state of political accountability in India. The programme question-answer format focuses on Members of Parliament with Sardana variously challenging and questioning the MP's using a detailed report of their work. The final segment of the programme culminates with a detailed "report card" on the work of the MP's for their respective constituency in advance of the 2014 Indian general elections.

Awards and recognition

In November 2017, Sardana got multiple threats from several Islamic organisations against his tweet. Several people from politics, the film industry, and social media came out in his support.