Suspense over Prasar Bharati CEO tenure

The information and broadcasting ministry has sought legal opinion on whether public broadcaster Prasar Bharati’s Chief Executive Officer B S Lalli can continue in office after April. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 22, 2009, 02:27:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The information and broadcasting ministry has sought legal opinion on whether public broadcaster Prasar Bharati’s Chief Executive Officer B S Lalli can continue in office after April.

The move comes at a time when the Prasar Bharati board is caught in a tussle between Lalli and chairman Arun Bhatnagar over alleged procedural irregularities, and broadcasting rights for the Commonwealth Games 2010.

Last year, the ministry had made an amendment to the Prasar Bharati Act, fixing the retirement age of the broadcaster’s chairman at 70 and that of the CEO at 65. The change was essentially made to oust the then chairman, M V Kamath, appointed by the NDA government. Bhatnagar replaced Kamath.

When Lalli was appointed the CEO two years ago, the age of retirement was 62. He turns 62 later this month.

The ministry wants to know if the amendment will be applicable in Lalli’s case. One view is that the amended law cannot be applied with retrospective effect, while the other view is if it could be applied in Kamath’s case, it would be valid in Lalli’s as well.

The ministry had sought the views of the vice-president’s office, the appointing authority for the CEO, but it returned the same, seeking law ministry’s opinion. Sources close to Lalli, however, said the law was clear and he had three more years to go.

Three board members — George Verghese, R N Bisaria and Sunil Kapoor, who wrote to the prime minister seeking a probe into the Prasar Bharati affairs — are against an extended tenure for Lalli.

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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