I&B wants license fee

The I&B Ministry wants the Govt to pay Prasar Bharati license fee it has not charged from TV and radio set owners for many years now, reports Chetan Chauhan

Updated on: Jul 11, 2007, 04:16:32 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Information and Broadcasting Ministry wants the government to pay Prasar Bharati license fee it has not charged from TV and radio set owners for many years now, reports Chetan Chauhan

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry wants the government to pay Prasar Bharati license fee it has not charged from television and radio set owners for many years now. A Group of Ministers, headed by Home Minister Shivraj Patil, will consider on Wednesday an I&B ministry recommendation to this effect.

Officials said Section 17 of the Prasar Bharati Act mentions the license fee, which was never charged. The ministry now wants a block payment from the government to make up for this loss.

This will help the corporation become financially self-reliant, just as the Memorandum of Understanding between Prasar Bharati and the ministry expected, the officials said.

The GoM will also consider proposals to absorb 36,000 Prasar Bharati employees. The personnel will get facilities similar to those for government servants. The GoM has been told the package will cost Prasar Bharati Rs 81 crore.

The GoM will also consider absorbing the officials on deputation in their current posts.

However, Finance Ministry believes the employees may not want to join Prasar Bharati permanently owing to its dependence on the government for grants.

The Consumer Electronic and Appliances Manufacturers Association has reacted with "shock" to the GoM proposal to levy fee on the production of television and radio sets.

A statement that the association released argued: "The total tax levied on radio sets and television is about 35 per cent. Higher tax is an incentive to grey market. A new tax will increase the grey market share to 45 per cent."

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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