I&B Bill to circumvent SC stay order on broadcast guidelines

The government has decided to bring a law to enforce the downlinking and uplinking guidelines notified last year, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 9, 2006, 24:32:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In order to circumvent the Supreme Court stay order on the broadcast guidelines, the government has decided to bring a law to enforce the downlinking and uplinking guidelines notified last year.

The I&B ministry's bill primarily envisages mandatory sharing of sports feed involving private broadcasters of India with Doordarshan. The bill is likely to be introduced in the winter session of Parliament, a ministry official said.

The move for mandatory sharing of feed was notified in broadcast guidelines but private broadcasters—Ten Sports and ESPN-Star Sports—moved the Supreme Court against them. They alleged that the guidelines don't provide a level playing field and equal business opportunity to them.

The ministry, while notifying the guidelines, had said that unlike private broadcasters Doordarshan has viewership in the remote parts of the country. Therefore, the feed should be shared to ensure that everyone in India could watch the major sporting events.

Its first impact of SC stay order was felt when Doordarshan was not allowed to share the feed of all the India-Pakistan cricket matches from Pakistan.

Thereafter, coverage of international cricket matches on Doordarshan has fallen dramatically, resulting in a loss of about Rs 200 crore.

But, the new bill is expected to restore revenue parity for Doordarshan.

According to officials, the bill allows Doordarshan to retain 25 per cent of the revenue generated while passing on the rest to the company holding broadcasting rights of the matches. It also states that each broadcaster will have to sign an agreement with Doordarshan well in advance for sharing the feed. "This is being done to ensure proper marketing of the event from DD's platform," an official said.

The government thought of introducing the bill as future of the controversial Broadcast Regulatory Bill is still in doldrums. Though the government had got suggestions from the stakeholders, including media companies, consensus still eludes over what should be deleted from the earlier bill. "We are preparing a draft for further discussion," a senior ministry official said, categorically stating that the Broadcast Bill will not be introduced in the winter session of Parliament.

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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