Militant threat, pending dues has DD jittery

Doordarshan rushed additional director general Mukesh Chander Sharma to Guwahati over reported militant threat over non-payment of dues to over 100 producers in the region, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 14, 2009, 23:32:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Doordarshan on Monday rushed additional director general Mukesh Chander Sharma to Guwahati over reported militant threat over non-payment of dues to over 100 producers in the region.

The producers claim they haven’t been paid since May 2008. Doordarshan in March had empanelled local filmmakers to produce programmes under a special broadcast package of the Home Ministry.

The ministry sanctions Rs 15 crore to Doordarshan every year for running special programmes in militant affected areas like Kashmir and the Northeast. Asgar Ahmed, a local producer alleged that while DD made the first installment in May 2008, no money has since been given to the producers, though the programmes went on air as schedule.

DD officials however, are busy in the blame game. Guwahati DD director Deven Basumudari blamed the Directorate of Doordarshan in Delhi. “The Delhi office did not sanction adequate money,” he said. And an official in the Delhi office told HT, “There is no money with us to make the payment."

In first week of January, a person reportedly claiming to be from a local militant group threatened the DD’s Guwahati office about the payment. Basumudari, however, refused to validate any militant threat.

A DD official said decision to send Sharma was taken as the situation was deemed alarming. Prasar Bharati CEO B.S. Lalli and Doordarshan Director General Noreen Naqvi couldn’t be contacted despite several attempts.

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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