Doordarshan, Air Staff Free To Choose Between Govt, Bci

The employees of Doordarshan and All India Radio are free to either remain with the government or join the proposed autonomous Broadcasting Corporation of India (BCI or Prasar Bharti). BCI would be a corporate entity free from government control and answerable to Parliament, according to information & broadcasting minister S Jaipal Reddy.

However, there is a provision in the Prasar Bharti Act that the government can make suggestions on certain issues to the BCI board, Reddy said at a press conference in New Delhi yesterday, a day after the government notified the Prasar Bharti Act. The Act will come into force on September 15, 1997.

We have about seven weeks before the chairman of the board and other members are elected for the constitution of BCI, the minister said. The corporation will be as independent as the BBC, he said.

General superintendence, direction and management of the affairs of BCI will be vested with the board which would consist of a chairman, an executive member, member (finance), member (personnel) and six part-time members.

The director-general of DD and AIR will be selected by the board. A representative of the information and broadcasting ministry and two representatives of the employees of the corporation would also be included in the board, Reddy said.

About the provision enabling the government to issue directions to the BCI board, Reddy denied that it would in any manner dilute the autonomy of BCI. Similar provisions are there in the BBC and other public service broadcasting organisation like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, he added. The term of the boards chairman to be selected by the Vice-President, the chairman of the Press Council of India and a nominee of the President will be six years.

The chairman can be removed or suspended only by the President on grounds of misbehaviour.

Reddy clarified that direct-to-home (DTH) services will be permitted in the country only after the Broadcasting Authority of India is in place.

He described as purely temporary the July 16 government notification banning DTH operations.

The Prasar Bharti Act was first introduced as a bill in Parliament in 1989 by the then I&B minister in the National Front government P Upendra. It was then thrown open for a national debate.

After several amendments many of them moved by the government itself based on the outcome of the national debate the bill was passed. Presidential assent came in September that year, but the Act was not notified.

The Congress government that formed the government at the Centre in mid-1991 maintained that apart from other issues, the Act would have to be reviewed in the light of the advent of the satellite television revolution.

In February 1995, the Supreme Court passed a judgment relating to cricket telecasts, in which it said that airwaves were public property and therefore the government must set up an autonomous public authority to regulate them by December 31, 1995. The court judgment was in the context of uplinking facilities sought by private satellite television channels, which the government has reserved to itself by virtue of the Wireless Act, 1885.

The Congress government also set up a three-member committee to look into the Prasar Bharti Act and suggest changes for incorporation and its final implementation.

The panel, headed by Nitish Sengupta, submitted its report in August 1996.

The present I&B minister made it clear that many suggestions of the Sengupta committee had been incorporated in the latest Act and others would be included as work progressed.