Who is PVS Sarma, director of Sanket Media arrested for allegedly faking newspaper circulation figures?

Recently, The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said that it has arrested PVS Sarma, the director of Sanket Media Pvt Ltd, for allegedly faking circulation figures of his newspaper, Satyam Times published in English and Gujarati, under Sanket Media Pvt Ltd to get advertisements.

A court in Ahmedabad sent him to ED custody till December 2. Sanket Media Pvt Ltd prints and publishes ‘Satyam Times’ newspaper in Gujarati and English.

It is said that though the circulation of the newspapers was shown at 23,500 and 6,000-6,300 copies daily for the Gujarati and English editions respectively, actual circulation was only around 300-600 and 0-290

Inflated figures of circulation were shown to attract more advertising agencies including the Directorate of Advertisement and Visual Publicity (DAVP) and other private advertising companies to publish their advertisements in the said newspaper

According to Indian Express, PVS Sarma hails from Andhra Pradesh, and was BJP vice president of Surat.

Sarma started out as a management trainee with Asian Paints for a year in 1988. He joined the Income Tax Department as inspector in 1990 and worked till 2007 and took voluntary retirement from the post of Senior Income tax officer.

He was elected from Limbayat ward, and held the chairmanship of the water committee. Three years ago he was appointed vice president of the Surat city unit of the BJP.