Former LSR principal, actor Pallavi Joshi appointed new members of BCCC

Former principal of Delhi University's LSR College Meenakshi Gopinath and actor Pallavi Joshi have been appointedas new members of the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC), an independent and autonomous self-regulatory body for non-news general entertainment channels.

The Board of Directors of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) has appointed Dr Meenakshi Gopinath,Pallavi Joshi and Dipa Dixit to the BCCC, a statement said.

They have replaced Sharmila Tagore, Arundhati Nag and Dr Ira Bhaskar, whose terms at the Council have ended, it said.

Tagore has, however, been elevated as a Special Invitee to BCCC, which was set up in 2011 and has by now addressed thousands of television content complaints in all Indian languages and in English over the 89 meetings it has conducted, the statement added.

Tara Murali, an expert on Tamil content, is the other Special Invitee to the 13-member council, chaired by former Supreme Court Judge Justice Vikramajit Sen.

Former Secretary to the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Uday Kumar Varma, is another member of BCCC, which also has on board representatives from the National Commission for Women (NCW), National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and National Commission for Minorities (NCM), among others.

"Content is close to my heart. Looking at television at times makes one wonder what happened to the good old days. But an organisation like BCCC, which takes cognisance of all the wrongdoings, is a hope that we are on the right track," Joshi was quoted as saying in the statement.

Dixit was amemberofBCCCfrom 2011 to 2013 in her ex-officio capacity as amemberof the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). She was instrumental in the drafting of child-related advisories thatBCCCsubsequently issued for the benefit of television channels, the statement said.