Doordarshan gets two DGs within a day

Within a gap of few hours on Tuesday, state-run broadcaster Doordarshan had two director generals — one full-time and another acting, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 11, 2009, 24:17:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Within a gap of few hours on Tuesday, state-run broadcaster Doordarshan had two director generals — one full-time and another acting.

In the morning, Aruna Sharma, a Madhya Pradesh cadre IAS officer, joined as the DG on the directions of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, a day after the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) asked the government to continue with acting DG Nooren Naqvi. The ministry was also told not to appoint a regular DG.

Deputy Director General Ashok Jhalkhani had filed a petition with CAT, stating that he was not called for the interview for the post of DG but his junior, acting DG, All India Radio, Jai Lal was.

“On Monday, CAT asked the government to maintain status quo,” said a DD official, who didn’t wish to be identified.

The CAT order was reportedly delivered to the ministry late Monday evening. Sharma, who was apparently not informed about it, joined as the DG, taking charge from Naqvi.

“She even called a meeting of senior officials as is the custom,” the official said.

But by early afternoon, senior officials of the Prasar Bharati Corporation, the body that controls DD, learnt about the CAT order. They swung into action as Sharma taking over as the DG would amount to contempt of the order.

By late evening, Prasar Bharati issued a circular, saying Naqvi would continue as acting DG, forcing Sharma, a 1982-batch officer, to relinquish office, said sources. Prasar Bharati CEO B.S. Lalli was not available for comments even after repeated attempts.

Jhalkani, the petitioner in the case, was not in the office to witness the drama that kept the Mandi House, the DD headquarters, busy during the day.

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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