NEW DELHI: The government does not consider it necessary to change the rules relating to content in the Programme and Advertising Codes prescribed under the Cable Television Networks (Regulations) Act 1995. It feels the provisions in the codes are adequate.

Information and Broadcasting Ministry sources told indiantelevision.com that the regulations were being implemented by the self-regulatory bodies under the Indian Broadcasting Foundation and the News Broadcasters Association.

However, the sources made it clear that the self-regulation mechanism put in place by the broadcasters ?does not replace the existing regulatory function of the fovernment arising out of the 1995 Act and rules framed thereunder?.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee of the I and B Ministry continues to look into violations of the Code reported to the Ministry, and also refers some of these complaints to the self-regulatory bodies: News Broadcasting Standards Authority headed by Justice J S Verma and the Broadcast Content Complaints Council headed by Justice A P Shah.

The committee presently has representatives from the I&B, Women and Child Development, Consumer Affairs, Home, Defence, External Affairs, Law, and Health and Family Welfare Ministries and the Advertising Standards Council of India.

In addition, the Ministry has set up 21 state-level monitoring committees including union territories and 274 district-level monitoring committees across the country.

The government had set up a committee in October 2005 which also had members from the civil society to recommend changes in the content, and this committee gave its report in March 2008.

However, broadcasters had rejected the report and the NBA was formed to set up its own regulatory mechanism, followed thereafter by the IBF establishing the BCCC.

Thereafter, the sources said, the government decided to give self-regulation a chance while insisting that it will step in whenever needed.

NEW DELHI: A coordination committee has been constituted in the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry to ensure convergence of advocacy, information and communication objectives and strategies of the ministry.

The committee will also remove bottlenecks in the conception and implementation of programmes, according to the Minister of State for I&B C M Jatua.

Sources told indiantelevision.com later that the primary aim of the committee was to ensure coordination amongst various media units under the ministry, primarily the Press Information Bureau, Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity, Directorate of Field Publicity, Song and Drama Division, all of which work to promote the flagship programmes of the government.

Other units include the Research, Reference, Training and Development wing, the Directorate of Film Festivals, and the Publications Division.

New Delhi: The government on Friday gave its approval to financial restructuring of Prasar Bharati, whereby the public broadcaster will from this year have to ensure its operating expenses other than salaries are met from revenue earnings.

The government will meet all the expenses of Prasar Bharati towards salary and salary-related expenses from its non-plan account for five years from 2012-13 to 2016-17.

These measures were a part of the proposal of the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry on financial restructuring of Prasar Bharati. The proposal was based on the recommendations of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Prasar Bharati constituted under the chairmanship of the Home Minister, to examine various issues pertaining to the functioning of Prasar Bharati. The recommendations were given over a year earlier.
 
The government will waive accumulated interest on loan-in-perpetuity, interest on capital loan and penal interest thereon. Loan-in-perpetuity and capital loans provided to Prasar Bharati will be converted into grants-in-aid.

From now on, any plan capital support by the government to Prasar Bharati will be in the form of grants-in-aid and not in the form of loans.

The government has also agreed to waive accumulated arrears pertaining to spectrum charges up to 31 March 2011 amounting to Rs 13.49 billion.

The property and assets will be transferred at book value to Prasar Bharati according to the provisions of Section 16(a) of the Prasar Bharati Act 1990. Normal accounting principles will be followed to determine their future value.

The Director General of Audit, Central Revenues (DGACR) will continue to be the nodal auditor of Prasar Bharati and will be assisted by qualified commercial audit staff for the audit of the annual accounts.

Prasar Bharati has been grappling with financial and human resource/employee issues since its inception, which has adversely affected its functioning as an autonomous organisation. In view of the problems being faced by the public broadcaster, the GoM was constituted on 7 March 2006. The GoM was again reconstituted on 21 February 2011 which considered Prasar Bharati‘s future revenue earning potential given its public service broadcasting mandate, and made a number of recommendations for making it financially viable and sustainable.