Prasar Bharti workers to get Govt status

After waiting for many years, Prasar Bharati employees are all set to get status equivalent to the government employees, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 13, 2007, 22:03:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After waiting for many years, Prasar Bharati employees are all set to get status equivalent to the government employees.

A Group of Ministers headed by Home Minister Shivraj Patil were unanimous that about 36,000 Prasar Bharati employees should get similar rights as other government employees. “By and large our view was that their (Prasar Bharati employees) rights should be protected within the framework of government employees,” a senior government functionary said.

However, the GoM has not decided that how Prasar Bharati employees will get government status. They are employees of an autonomous corporation and therefore, not entitled to government facilities. Giving them government employee status may raise questions over the functional autonomy of Prasar Bharati.

The functionary said, the GoM will work out the mechanism to given them government employee status at its next meeting slated after President elections process ends by July 22. The government has to submit its reply on the status of Prasar Bharati employees to Supreme Court before August 2.

The GoM’s view will mean extra burden of Rs 81 crore to Prasar Bharati. Once they employees get the status, they would be entitled to a government house and admission of their children in Kendriya Vidalayas.

The GoM also agreed that the employees on deputation to Prasar Bharati would be given an option for joining the corporation permanently or going back to their parent cadre. The issue related to promotion of 11 categories of PB employees was also discussed at the meeting.

However, the issues pertaining to impose license fee to own a television or radio set and impose tax on purchase of new television was not discussed. “Our priority was employees,” he said.

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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