GOVERNMENT RE-ISSUES EXECUTIVE ORDER ON PRASAR BHARATI

Despite protestations from opposition parties and criticism in the media, the BJP-led government last week re-issued an executive order on the Prasar Bharati Act. The earlier executive order - which had nullified the amendments to the Prasar Bharati Act brought about by the previous United Front government -- was due to lapse on 10 January. The order promulgated on 29 August 1998 had helped the BJP-led government to sack the Prasar Bharati chief S.S. Gill and make TV broadcaster Doordarshan and All India Radio (both go to make up the Prasar Bharati) answerable to a committee made up of politicians.

The Indian President K.R. Narayanan issued another executive order last week because the BJP government had failed to introduce a bill, replacing his earlier order, during the winter session of Parliament. Under the Indian Constitution, the executive order had to be replaced by a bill within six weeks of commencement of the winter session of Parliament.

Meanwhile, information & broadcasting (I&B) minister Pramod Mahajan has been inducted on the group of telecom (GoT), which is working on drawing up a new telecom policy, encompassing telecom, broadcasting and the Internet. Hitherto, the GoT did not have an I&B representative.

Mahajan is pushing the I&B ministry's viewpoint with the GoT. The latter has proposed that control and regulation of broadcasting frequencies should be the responsibility of an independent body, the Broadcasting Authority of India, and not under the department of telecom (DoT) as has been the practice so far. It has said that a special provision needs to be brought into the Broadcasting Bill on the issue of "spectrum management."

The I&B ministry's has highlighted that it, and not the communications ministry, should have the headache of regulating the convergence of telecom and broadcasting technologies.

The I&B ministry has additionally proposed that the Broadcasting Authority of India should be in charge of content regulation, whereas the existing Telecom Regulatory Authority of India should have the responsibility of "conduit or carrier" regulation.

The I&B ministry has also suggested that the Wireless Adviser who assigns frequencies should be moved out of DoT and given independent charge. This would allow it to be impartial to both telecom and broadcasting and give an objective view on frequency assignment.