NEW DELHI: Although the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has issued 349 letter of intent for setting up community radios in the country, only 115 organisations have operationalised their radio stations.

Thus, the remaining LOI holders will have to apply for necessary clearance from the WPC for frequency allocation and subsequent SACFA clearance to be able to operationalise their stations.

The Ministry considers setting up Community Radio Stations a thrust area and, therefore, wants to help operators.

The Ministry has been informed that there are several communication barriers between LOI holders and WPC, which is preventing many LOI holders to operationalise their community radio stations.

In order to remove these barriers, the Ministry in association with Unicef and WPC Wing of the Department of Telecommunications has organised a Workshop with all those LOI holders who have not been able to make their radio stations operational.

The First Workshop in this direction is being organised on 2 November at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi and there is no fee for attending this workshop.

NEW DELHI: Uday Kumar Varma, who had earlier served as special secretary in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, was today appointed secretary in the same Ministry, succeeding Raghu Menon who retired at the end of September.

Varma is a senior Indian Administrative Service Officer from Madhya Pradesh belonging to the 1976 batch. He was presently serving as secretary in the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises Ministry. 

Indiantelevision.com had earlier reported that Varma was tipped to succeed Menon as I&B secretary.

After Menon demitted office on superannuation, culture secretary Jawhar Sircar was given additional charge of the post.

Varma?s appointment has been cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet.

NEW DELHI: The government has asked all television channels to disclose complete information pertaining to SMS or call rates which are applicable to quiz shows continuously through scroll or display in the language of the programme and ensure that callers are not unnecessarily put on hold for long periods.

Once a winner is decided, he/she should be informed immediately and no further calls should be put on hold or SMSs solicited, according to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

Transparency and fair dealing is necessary in the conduct of these programmes so that the viewers/participants do not feel cheated or duped while taking part in such programmes, the directive says.

In guidelines for Conduct and Carriage of such programmes issued under section 20 of the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act 1995, the Ministry has made it clear that deliberately keeping telephones on hold for long periods or charging exorbitant fee for SMS for quiz
shows on television offends good taste and decency and is, therefore, violative of Rule 6(1)(a) of the rules under the Act.

Furthermore, any misleading advertisement about these shows that does not give adequate information about charges etc. will violate Rule 7(1) of the Rules under the Act.

The Ministry has also said a channel is responsible for adhering to the Act and the Uplinking and Downlinking Guidelines and can‘t, therefore, take refuge under the excuse that a programme has been produced by a third party and the channels merely sell air time to these parties.

Noting that channels questioned by the Ministry said they had no direct control over the production, format of the programme or any alleged calls received from participants, the Ministry has also made it clear that no channel can relegate its responsibility on the nature of the programme or advertisements. .

The Guidelines came after frequent complaints about exorbitant rates charges for calls, and some callers being kept on hold for long periods, thus having to pay huge sums on mobile phone calls which are inflated for such programmes. Some of the complainants said the format of these programmes was such as to dupe the callers and viewers.

NEW DELHI: Uday K Varma, who had earlier served as Special Secretary in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, is tipped to succeed Raghu Menon as Secretary even as orders came promoting Supriya Sahu as the Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) in the Ministry.

Varma is a senior Indian Administrative Service Officer from Madhya Pradesh belonging to the 1976 batch. He is presently serving as Secretary in the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises Ministry.

After Raghu Menon demitted office on superannuation, Culture Secretary Jawahar Sircar was given additional charge of the post.

Sahu is also an Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1991 batch from Tamil Nadu. She has until now been Director (Broadcasting) in the same Ministry.

Sahu will be replacing Arvind Kumar, who has been appointed as the new chief vigilance officer (CVO) of National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC), though he has been asked to continue in I&B Ministry ?until further orders?.

Sahu had earlier been the District Collector of Nilgiris district, where she was the force behind the ?Say no to plastics? campaign to protect the eco-system of the hill station Ooty. Before that, she held the post of Additional Collector of Vellore district.

NEW DELHI: An ordinance is expected to be promulgated shortly to make changes in the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act 1990 following the recommendations of a Group of Ministers which examined various issues relating to the pubcaster.

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has done a comprehensive review of the provisions of the Prasar Bharati Act and has recommended certain amendments to the Act, which have been approved by the Law Ministry.

Asked why these amendments could not wait for the winter session of Parliament, Information and Broadcasting Ministry sources told indiantelevision.com that the posts of Chief Executive Officer as well as Member (Personnel) were becoming vacant in December and October respectively, and the Government wanted to take new incumbents under new rules. 

The GoM also considered the various recommendations of the High Level Committee on the Commonwealth Games headed by V K Shunglu with regard to the pubcaster.

Acting against the then CEO B S Lalli had proved to be a long process with the Ministry approaching the President through the Prime Minister and the apex court appointing a Judge to probe the charges. The amendments also aim at simplifying this process and by instituting a three member panel comprising the Vice -President, Chairman of the Press Council of India and a nominee of the government, currently responsible for appointments of top officials ? to take action in such cases.

Inefficiency, indiscipline and misbehaviour are also sought to be added as grounds for removal of a CEO, or the DGs of All India Radio and Doordarshan, apart from the permanent members of the Prasar Bharati Board.

The GoM in particular made recommendations regarding the relationship between the Government and Prasar Bharati and the CEO and the Prasar Bharati Board.

Not merely that, but the GoM had also recommended addition of two more permanent members: Member (Technical) and Member (Marketing).

Earlier this year, the GoM also studied the recommendations of a Committee of four joint secretaries on disparity in pay scales of Prasar Bharati employees and also made some recommendations with regard to the waiver of some dues from Prasar Bharati. The Committees for studying the amendments to the Act and the pay scale anomalies had been formed by the GoM headed by P Chidambaram in June last year.

The GoM had also given its recommendations on the Prasar Bharati Board?s proposal that the Government should meet 100 per cent of the expenses on salaries and allowances of the employees and 50 per cent of operating expenses of Prasar Bharati, while the pubcaster will meet the balance 50 per cent of the operating expenses.The existing provision requires Prasar Bharati to generate at least 50 per cent of its operating expenses as commercial revenue.

The long-pending Recruitment Rules for 196 cadres of employees in Prasar Bharati were considered for forwarding to Government. Non-existence of these Rules ever since Prasar Bharati came into being in 1997 was a major reason for the huge backlog in filling up the vacancies and making vital appointments, something which has come under heavy criticism in Parliamentary Committees.

NEW DELHI: Arvind Kumar, Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, has been asked to stay on ?until further orders?.

Earlier, he had been asked to take over as the chief vigilance officer in the National Buildings Construction Corporation from 1 October.

Arvind Kumar, an Indian Administrative Service officer from Uttar Pradesh from the 1988 batch, had been elevated from the post of director in August last year. He succeeded the slot vacated by Zohra Chatterji.

Kumar completed his five-year term with the Central Government in May but his term had been extended in view of some incomplete projects of the Ministry relating to broadcasting.

Under IAS rules, an officer can serve for five years at the Centre and should then either be sent back to his home cadre or posted in a designation technically not termed as deputation.

Singh has also sung for popular movies like Sarfarosh and Tarqeeb.