Prasar Bharati seeks more say in posting of info officials

Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar has sought more say for the public broadcaster in postings of Indian Information Service officers in Doordarshan and All India Radio so that issues like controversy over "deliberately edited" pre-poll interview of Narendra Modi do not arise.
In a letter written to Information and Broadcasting Ministry, he has said that Prasar Bharati has in the past two and a half years made several suggestions for posting and transfer of IIS officers and hinted that many have not been accepted.
The letter was written on August 8, the day S M Khan, DG (News) of Doordarshan, was removed from the post and put on "compulsory wait" but Sircar rejected any link between the two developments.

Khan was reportedly shunted out because of the editing done to Modi's interview to Doordarshan before the elections. Some other reports had it that it was due to poor coverage of Modi's visit to Nepal recently.
Sircar, in the letter, suggested that the ministry bifurcate the work on a pro-rata basis and after which, postings of IIS officers to PB could be decided by the Prasar Bharati Board and orders issued, only after informing I&B Ministry.
"Since we are completely in the dark about career details of the officers, which are readily available in the ministry's files, it would be appropriate to share these with Prasar Bharati.

"I hope you will consider this proposal favourably as we do not want to land up in issues, such as the deliberately- edited interview of Sh Narendra Modi on the 27th of April, which created such controversy," Sircar said.
Further, Sircar wrote that Prasar Bharati can be held responsible only if it monitors News Division and added that then IIS officers can also accept the fact that they have to work in tandem with Prasar Bharati.
"In this letter, we are only reiterating our proposal for a "Professional Electronic Media Cadre" within the IIS, that could be developed by Prasar Bharati, To link it with transfer of DG (News) appears rather strange to us," Prasar Bharati officials said reacting to certain media reports.