[24][25] In recent decades, the newspaper has been criticised for establishing in the Indian news industry the practice of accepting payments from persons and entities in exchange for positive coverage.

[26][27] The paper was published on Wednesdays and Saturdays under the direction of Raobahadur Narayan Dinanath Velkar, a Maharashtrian social reformer, and contained news from Britain and the world, as well as the Indian Subcontinent.

[28][29][30][31] In 1860, editor Robert Knight (1825–1892) bought the Indian shareholders' interests, merged with rival Bombay Standard, and started India's first news agency.

Knight fought for a press free of prior restraint or intimidation, frequently resisting the attempts by governments, business interests and cultural spokesmen, and led the paper to national prominence.

Subsequently, TOI saw its ownership change several times until 1892 when an English journalist named Thomas Jewell Bennett, along with Frank Morris Coleman (who later drowned in the 1915 sinking of the SS Persia), acquired the newspaper through their new joint stock company, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. Sir Stanley Reed edited TOI from 1907 until 1924[34] and received correspondence from major figures of India such as Mahatma Gandhi.

[35] In 1955 the Vivian Bose Commission of Inquiry found that Ramkrishna Dalmia, in 1947, had engineered the acquisition of the media giant Bennett Coleman & Co. by transferring money from a bank and an insurance company of which he was the chairman.

Upon his release, his son-in-law, Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, to whom he had entrusted the running of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., rebuffed his efforts to resume command of the company.

Based on the pleading, the Justice directed the Government to assume control of the newspaper which resulted in replacing half of the directors and appointing a Bombay High Court judge as the chairman.

[39][40][41][42] On 26 June 1975, the day after India declared a state of emergency, the Bombay edition of TOI carried an entry in its obituary column that read "D.E.M.

TOI has its editions in major cities such as Mumbai,[51] Agra, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Aurangabad, Bareilly, Bangalore, Belgaum, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Dehradun, Delhi, Gorakhpur, Gurgaon, Guwahati, Gwalior, Hubli, Hyderabad, Indore, Jabalpur, Jaipur, Jammu, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolhapur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Madurai, Malabar, Mangalore, Meerut, Mysore, Nagpur, Nashik, Navi Mumbai, Noida, Panaji, Patna, Pondicherry, Pune, Raipur, Rajkot, Ranchi, Shimla, Surat, Thane, Tiruchirapally, Trivandrum, Vadodara, Varanasi, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam.

[4] In 2005, TOI began the practice of "private treaties", also called as "brand capital", where new companies, individuals or movies seeking mass coverage and public relations, major brands and organisations were offered sustained positive coverage and plugs in its news columns in exchange for shares or other forms of financial obligations to Bennett, Coleman & Company, Ltd.

[citation needed] The "paid news" and "private treaties" blur the lines between content and advertising, with the favourable coverage written by the staff reporters on the payroll of TOI.

In 2010, a report by a subcommittee of the Press Council of India found that Medianet's paid news strategy had spread to a large number of newspapers and more than five hundred television channels.

[4][58] Critics state that the company's paid news and private treaties skew its coverage and shield its newspaper advertisers from scrutiny.

[4] The Hoot, a media criticism website, has pointed out that when a lift in a 19-storey luxury apartment complex in Bangalore crashed -- killing two workers and injuring seven -- all the English language and Kannada language newspapers, with the exception of TOI, called out the name of the construction company, Sobha Developers, which was a private-treaty partner.

In both cases, the article was factually incorrect and made false claims about the success of Monsanto's genetically modified cotton.

[4] According to a critical article published in the Indian investigative news magazine The Caravan, when the Honda Motors plant in Gurgaon experienced an eight-month-long conflict between management and non-unionised workers over wages and work conditions in 2005, the Times of India covered the concerns of Honda and the harm done to India's investment climate, and largely ignored the issues raised by workers.

[4] Vineet Jain, managing director of B.C.C.L., has insisted that a wall does exist between sales and the newsroom, and that the paper does not give favorable coverage to the company's business partners.

[4] In 2018, Vineet Jain, managing director of B.C.C.L., and Sanjeev Shah, executive president of B.C.C.L., were caught on camera as part of a sting operation by Cobrapost agreeing to promote right-wing content through the group's many media properties for a proposed spend of ₹500 crore (US$58 million), some of which the client said could only be paid with black money.