Govt mulls new revenue model for Prasar Bharati

The issue of funding Prasar Bharati Corporation, either through levying licence fee on new TV sets, advertising revenue or government support, will soon be decided, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 15, 2007, 02:48:47 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The issue of funding Prasar Bharati Corporation — either through levying licence fee on new TV sets, advertising revenue or government support — will soon be decided.

A group of ministers headed by Home Minister Shivraj Patil has asked the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to come up with a plan on the issue, which will then be taken up by the Cabinet. “A comprehensive proposal should be worked out on priority by the I&B Ministry in consultation with the Ministry of Finance for consideration of the Cabinet,” said the GoM.

The I&B Ministry has been stating Prasar Bharati should be allowed to charge licence fees on TV sets, as provided in the Prasar Bharati Act, or a cess of Rs 500 on new sets. The proposal, however, has been opposed by the Finance Ministry.

But I&B officials are optimistic that issues concerning funding will be sorted out with the Finance Ministry soon. The I&B Ministry is also formulating a proposal to grant deemed status to Prasar Bharati employees even though Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has termed it a very “bad option”.

“A long-term solution will have to be found eventually under which either the employees will have to accept absorption in Prasar Bharati and have full loyalty to that organization or Prasar Bharati itself may be scrapped,” Chidambaram had told the GoM meeting on October 5. However, the GoM instructed the I&B Ministry to propose amendments to section 11 of the Prasar Bharati Act and Department of Personnel and Training to amend Section 37 (a) of the pension rules so that Prasar Bharati employees can get deemed deputation status.

The GoM has also given the ministry the go-ahead to consider an ordinance to make the amendments effective once cleared by Cabinet.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.