I&B looks to stem Prasar Bharati rot

Eight months after infighting came to the fore in Prasar Bharati, the Information and Broadcasting ministry is set to intervene and is looking at different options, including issuing an Ordinance, to supercede the existing board members or replace some of them, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 11, 2009, 01:27:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Eight months after infighting came to the fore in Prasar Bharati (PB), the Information and Broadcasting ministry is set to intervene and is looking at different options, including issuing an Ordinance, to supercede the existing board members or replace some of them.

The government constituted the public broadcasting body Prasar Bharati Board in 1992 on lines of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to provide full functional and financial autonomy to run Doordarshan and All India Radio. The board still gets close to Rs 1,500 crore from the ministry (85 per cent of its budget) every year to run the organization of 40,000 employees.

Since February 2009, the board’s functioning has come to a standstill with two factions led by its Chairman Arun Bhatnagar and its Chief Executive Officer BS Lalli accusing each other of administrative malpractices, resulting in court cases.

“We are seeking informal legal view on different options available,” a senior ministry functionary told HT. “Nothing has been firmed up so far and all options are under discussion”.

The ministry cannot directly intervene as the Prasar Bharati Act gives powers only to Parliament to supercede the board or remove a permanent member.

“Ordinance is the possible way out,” an official, who didn’t want to be named, said. “The decision will be taken at political level”.

In 2008, the ministry had used the Ordinance route to remove the then chairman MV Kamath.

Last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had reportedly asked I&B Minister Ambika Soni to restore order in the corporation. Soni had tried to break the ice between the two factions, but failed.

“Each section blames the other for the chaos and are refusing to budge,” a ministry functionary explained.

I&B secretary Raghu Menon met Chief Vigilance Commissioner Pratyush Sinha and Union Law Secretary TK Vishwanathan to discuss various options. The ministry had referred seven cases related to PB to the Central Vigilance Commission for inquiry.

The worst causality of the infighting has been the delay in finalisating the broadcast preparations for the Commonwealth Games 2010, for which, the I&B ministry has now set an October 15 deadline.

“We have to get the games broadcast plan approved at the meeting of World Broadcasting Union in Delhi on October 26 or else Prasar Bharati case lose the contract of being host broadcaster,” a ministry official said.

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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