I&B Ministry
Information and Broadcasting goes to Arun Jaitley
NEW DELHI: Arun Jaitley, who has been divested of the Defence portfolio, has once again taken up the mantle of Information and Broadcasting Minister – a post he had held when A B Vajpayee was the Prime Minister – in addition to Finance and Corporate Affairs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, thus, upgraded the post of I&B Minister which has been held by Ministers of State with Independent Charge under Vajpayee, Dr Manmohan Singh and Modi.
Jaitley will also have a Minister of State to assist him in Information and Broadcasting – Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.
While Defence has gone to former Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, former I& B Minister will continue to retain the Environment and Forests portfolio. Ravi Shankar Prasad also continues to retain the Communications portfolio and former actress Smriti Irani continues to hold the Human Resource Development portfolio, both in cabinet rank.
Currently a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat, Jaitley is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court. He had commenced his political career with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the Bhartiya Janta Party. He has been a member of the national executive of Bharatiya Janata Party since 1991. After the BJP led National Democratic Alliance came to power under Atal Behari Vajoayee, Jaitley was appointed Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting (Independent Charge) on 13 October 1999.
Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore is an Indian shooter and politician, who rose to fame after winning the Silver medal in Men’s Double Trap at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. On 10 September 2013, Rathore joined the BJP after taking voluntary retirement from the Indian Army. He was elected as a Member of Parliament in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Jaipur Rural.
A film personality, singer Babul Supriyo, finds a berth in the cabinet as Minister of State for Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation.
I&B Ministry
Prasar Bharati sets EPG standards for DD Free Dish platform
New specs define 7-day guide, LCN mapping, and device compatibility.
MUMBAI: Your TV guide just got a backstage pass structured, scheduled, and far more in sync. Prasar Bharati has released detailed technical specifications for Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) services on DD Free Dish, laying down a standardised framework for how channels and programme information are organised and delivered. At the core of the update is a defined EPG data structure, covering genre-based categorisation, scheduling formats, and Logical Channel Numbering (LCN). The aim is simple: make navigation less guesswork and more guided experience across the platform’s over 40 million households.
The specifications also introduce a seven-day programme guide window for each channel, alongside clear rules for channel grouping and LCN mapping effectively deciding not just what you watch, but how easily you find it.
On the technical front, the document outlines requirements for Program Specific Information (PSI) and Service Information (SI), including descriptor usage across tables such as PAT, BAT and NIT. It further details service lists and network linkage parameters, giving OEMs and developers a clearer blueprint for integration.
Importantly, the framework is designed to work seamlessly with television sets equipped with in-built satellite tuners, enabling users to access DD Free Dish directly without additional hardware, an incremental but meaningful step towards simplifying access.
The platform will continue to operate on GSAT-15 transponders, using MPEG-4 compression and DVB-S2 transmission standards, ensuring continuity even as the interface evolves.
While largely technical, the move signals a broader push towards standardisation and user-friendly discovery in India’s free-to-air ecosystem because sometimes, the real upgrade isn’t what’s on screen, but how easily you get there.
