Cabinet to consider new FM policy, hike in MPLAD

The Union Cabinet on Thursday is expected to take two major policy decisions -- extending FM radio to new areas and increase the annual MPs local area development fund from Rs 2 to Rs 5 crore.

Updated on: Jul 6, 2011, 21:16:38 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Union Cabinet on Thursday is expected to take two major policy decisions -- extending FM radio to new areas and increase the annual MPs local area development fund from Rs 2 to Rs 5 crore.

Under the FM phase-III policy, the government wants to extend the service to Jammu and Kashmir, north-eastern areas and Andaman and Nicobar Islands and smaller cities. As many as 700 new channels are expected to be auctioned in phase-III covering most of the cities having population of more than 10 lakh.

In the new FM policy, the Information and Broadcasting ministry has proposed special incentive of 15% relaxation in license fee to set up channels on borders areas in J&K and north-east.

The big change expected in the new policy is to allow private FM channels to run news sources from government broadcasters All India Radio and Doordarshan. Also, the channels will be allowed to set up their own transmission facilities as against existing provision of using Prasar Bharati resources.

According to a study by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and PricewaterhouseCoopers Indian FM radio industry was worth Rs 1,200-crore industry by 2010.

The government had allocated 337 new FM channels in two phases earlier till 2006.

The Cabinet will also consider a proposal from Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to increase MPLAD and to make it operational from April 2, 2011. An announcement in this regard was made in the Union budget by Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee.

The Cabinet will also examine the recommendations of Majithia Wage Board for journalists and a special industrial package for Jammu and Kashmir.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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