Former TNIE Deputy Resident Editor G Babu JayakumarIn the ongoing editorial overhaul of The New Indian Express headquartered in Chennai, another major change hit the newsroom with the unceremonious removal of G Babu Jayakumar, who was the Deputy Resident Editor of North and East Tamil Nadu region and a key editor in the Chennai newsroom.According to sources in the newsroom in Chennai, a note was put up by the newly-appointed Editor GS Vasu on July 3 stating that D Suresh Kumar, who was the Deputy Resident Editor of South and West Tamil Nadu, would be in-charge of the whole state. Subsequently, it was conveyed to Jayakumar that he need not attend the daily editorial meeting. There was also a request from the management asking Jayakumar to resign.Babu Jayakumar refused. If sources close to him are to be believed, he told the management that he will continue to work unless the management wanted to break his contract which obliged them to pay out three months salary if they wanted him to leave. On July 4, he was handed over his settlement-cheque and he left the TNIE office for good. Editorial restructuring and cost-cutting are being cited as reasons for the decision.Jayaukumar has worked in TNIE for the past ten years, starting as a News Editor, later as the Metro Editor and then appointed as the Deputy Resident Editor. He has close to 29 years of experience in journalism. When The News Minute contacted him, he said, “I do not want to comment about this now.”“It is astounding, and we are not able to fit this into any pattern, so we really do not know what is happening,” says another employee of TNIE under conditions of anonymity, “We understand that editorial changes at the level of Editor or Editorial Director can happen overnight, but we did not imagine this happening to the DRE.”Just recently, TNM had reported on the editorial changes in TNIE, when GS Vasu was appointed as the Editor of the newspaper and Prabhu Chawla’s name was dropped from the imprint. The changes also meant that V Sudarshan, the Executive Editor to who GS Vasu was earlier reporting to, now reports to GS Vasu and will only be taking care of the editorial pages.Another interesting sequence of events has set tongues wagging in the TNIE newsroom. For the first time since he left, Aditya Sinha, who was once the Editor of TNIE, wrote a column for the paper on the recently released book “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years” which he co-authored with former RAW chief AS Dulat. Aditya Sinha was one of the first to point out on social media that Chawla’s name had been dropped from the imprint, and posted tweets like these Weird. http://t.co/zToY25y7Ai — Hyber Nation (@autumnshade) July 2, 2015 Following this, Prabhu Chawla has been consistently criticizing AS Dulat on his timeline with such tweets. So #Dulat hogged the prime time by revealing selectively and hiding many things? https://t.co/KIrx1FGABz — Prabhu Chawla (@PrabhuChawla) July 4, 2015