NEW DELHI: Contrary to plans of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, the present government has said there are no plans to introduce a comprehensive broadcast legislation in the Parliament.

Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley said, "No such proposal is under consideration of the Ministry."

The previous government had not only drawn up plans for such legislation but placed it on the Ministry website. In fact, a draft of the proposed Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2007 - which was a revised version of the proposed legislation of 2006 – is still on the website.   

Meanwhile, Jaitley told Lok Sabha that all the areas uncovered by terrestrial transmitters along with rest of the country have been provided with multichannel TV coverage through Doordarshan’s free to air direct-to-home Freedish service anywhere in the country. 

Doordarshan coverage is estimated to be available to about 92 per cent population spread over about 81 per cent area of the country.

DD has 1416 TV transmitters of varying power in terrestrial mode, whereas DD's Free Dish services on DTH has currently 64 TV channels on air.