Tv Wars Over Getting Budget Papers In Advance

Various news organisations are up in arms against the finance ministrys move to hand over the budget speech to Prannoy Roys team for Star Plus a few hours before finance minister P Chidambaram reads it in the Lok Sabha at 5 pm next Friday.

There is a battle royal within the government over this. Chidambaram and his aides are all for it, but the governments official voice, the Press Information Bureau, is strongly against it. And the Intelligence Bureau is concerned about the secrecy of the tax proposals.

As usual, the speech is to be given to Doordarshans news analysts - this time, TV Today of the Living Media group, which plans a six-hour `Budget Aaj Tak.

 

Until last year, Prannoy Roy of New Delhi Television used to anchor Doordarshans budget-related programmes and, therefore, got copies of the budget documents in the morning for his team of analysts. They were locked up and rendered incommunicado at a Doordarshan studio until the speech was delivered.

Over the past year, Roy has contracted to produce news and current affairs programmes, including Star News for Star Plus, part of the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Star TV. Doordarshan has since dissociated itself from Roy.

On February 13, Roy faxed a request to finance secretary Montek Singh Ahluwalia to give his team an advance copy again. The argument for the facility: Star would take the Indian budget proposals to potential investors in 56 countries. Chidambaram approved the proposal and sent it to the PIB.

The officials in charge there argued that, while there was a clear argument and a precedent for giving the documents early to the government-controlled Doordarshan, the facility could not be extended to one private channel and not to others.

The PIB had already received similar requests from various foreign and Indian news agencies and satellite channels like Zee TV, BBC and ABNI. Some of these have come to know of Roys move and have been counter-lobbying vigorously. In the cut-throat world of broadcasting, early access to the budget proposals could give a channel an immense advantage over competitors.

The PIB and the Intelligence Bureau have also argued that it would not be possible to guarantee at Roys offices the sort of security that the IB provides for budget documents at the North Block offices of the finance ministry and at Doordarshans studios.

The PIB has made a counter-proposal, that representatives of the major media organisations be allowed to gather in a secured room at the North Block or other government premises on February 28 morning and be locked in with the budget proposals until the speech was delivered.

A security team was seen surveying the PIBs large conference room on Thursday morning. However, the finance ministry is apparently not keen on the alternate proposal.

There is another battle in tandem with this one between Star and the rest, to telecast the budget speech live.

In the recent past Doordarshan and Star Plus have aired the budget speech live after Star agreed to use signals generated by Doordarshan.

Once again, Star has requested permission to air the budget speech live. The government is still to give this proposal a green signal.

Predictably, competing channels want to be given whatever Star is permitted.