NEW DELHI: Only Dish TV is carrying 32 educational television channels of the human resource development ministry in spite of appeals by ministry to all the private DTH operators.

An information and broadcasting ministry source told indiantelevision.com that the department of higher education of the HRD Ministry had approved the launch of ‘Swayam Prabha' -- a project for operationalising 32 Direct to Home (DTH) television channels for providing high quality educational content to all teachers, students and citizens across the country interested in lifelong learning.

However, Doordarshan’s FreeDish had not taken any channels as yet as it had space for only eighty channels and would consider adding new channels when it switches from MPEG 2 to MPEG4.

There will be new content of four hours every day in these channels, which would be telecast 6 times a day allowing the student to choose the time of his/her convenience.

The soft launch of the channels has already been done and all private DTH operators had been requested to carry the channels.

The HRD Ministry had also requested cable operators to carry these educational channels but with no success so far, the source said.

(This report had earlier erroneously stated that only three educational channels of the HRD ministry are being carried by Dish TV. It was an inadvertent error and it is regretted - Editor)