MUMBAI: Rajya Sabha member and Lokmat Group chairman and MD Vijay Darda has been elected as the chairman of the Audit Bureau Of Circulations (ABC) for 2010-2011 term. Darda, who has been a member of ABC’s Council of Management since 2003, was deputy chairman for 2009-2010.

Meanwhile, Madison Media CMD Sam Balsara was unanimously elected as deputy chairman for the one-year term.
 
A third-time member of the Rajya Sabha, Darda has served national and international media bodies in different capacities. He has served as president of Indian Newspaper Society, member of the Press Council of India, founder president of the South Asian Editors Forum.

Other members of ABC’s Council of Management are: Ravi Dahriwal from Benett Coleman and Co Ltd (BCCL); T Venkattram Reddy from Deccan Chronicle and Shailesh Gupta from Jagran Prakashan.

Other publisher representatives of the Council are M Venkatesh of Hindustan Media Ventures, Amit Mathew of Malayala Manorama, Arita Sarkar of ABP and I Venkat of Ushodaya Enterprises.
 
Members of the advertising agencies‘ representatives are Shahshidhar Sinha of Universal McCann Erickson (India) who also is the Honorary Secretary of ABC. Among other members are Madhukar Kamath of Mudra Communications (also Hon Treasurer) and Vikram Sakhuja of Group M Media India.
 
 
The advertisers’ representatives are Subroto Chattopadhyay of the Peninsula Foundation, Paulomi Dhawan (Raymond Ltd), S M Ahmad (ITC Ltd) and Ravi Pisharody of Tata Motors Ltd.

Hormuzd Masani is the Secretary General at the Secretariat.