Slug fest in Prasar over ’10 Games

The 2010 Commonwealth Games has become a bone of contention between two members of the Prasar Bharati Corporation, which owns the global telecast rights for the Games. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 6, 2009, 02:18:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The 2010 Commonwealth Games has become a bone of contention between two members of the Prasar Bharati Corporation, which owns the global telecast rights for the Games. AK Jain, Prasar Bharati’s member finance, has objected to Chief Executive Officer B S Lalli’s expression of interest from foreign companies for the coverage of the Commonwealth Games. Lalli had sought the Prasar Bharati board’s permission to allow foreign companies to offer the telecast facilities for Commonwealth Games, 2010, which the board had approved.

Jain’s objection follows his allegation that no the regular audit of DD accounts was done for last three years and a wrong representation of the facts was being presented to the board.

In what is seen as a retaliatory measure, on February 27 Jain received an order from Information & Broadcasting Ministry, that controls Prasar Bharati, asking him either to quit Indian Administrative Service (IAS) to continue as member of Prasar Bharati Board or return to his parent cadre Arunachal Pradesh.

On Thursday, Jain moved the Central Administrative Tribunal against the order terming it as a complete violation of the rules.

Jain’s objections has found support with CPIM MP Hannan Moolah, who has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking cancellation of the tenders. “Instead of giving Rs 430 crore to the foreign television companies for production, Prasar Bharati should buy equipment to improve Doordarshan and All India Radio’s production quality”, Moolah told HT.

However, Director General of Doordarshan Aruna Sharma justified the outsourcing measure, saying the decision has been taken to provide quality coverage. The coverage would be on high-definition transmission facility for which the Central government plans to allocate Rs 300 crore.

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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