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.
MUMBAI: When the numbers go silent, the noise on screen gets a little harder to measure. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has extended the suspension of television rating data for news channels, directing Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) to withhold TRPs for another four weeks. The latest order, issued on March 31, 2026, builds on an earlier directive from March 6 that had paused ratings for a month. The ministry has clarified that the blackout will continue for four weeks or until further instructions are issued whichever comes earlier keeping the industry in a prolonged state of data drought.
The reasoning, officials suggest, lies far beyond domestic screens. With geopolitical tensions in West Asia continuing to escalate, the government has flagged concerns over how such developments could influence news consumption and presentation. The move is aimed at curbing excessive sensationalism and speculative coverage during what it describes as a sensitive global moment.
For the broadcast ecosystem, the absence of Television Rating Points (TRPs) is more than symbolic, it removes the industry’s primary scorecard. Ratings dictate advertising flows, shape editorial strategies and fuel the competitive pecking order among news channels. Without them, broadcasters are effectively operating without a public performance benchmark.
The timing only adds to the complexity. Amid a high-intensity global news cycle, channels must now navigate audience engagement without the weekly feedback loop that typically drives programming decisions. Advertisers, too, are left recalibrating, leaning on proxies such as brand strength, reach and distribution instead of hard viewership data.
While framed as a temporary regulatory intervention tied to maintaining public order, the extended suspension underscores a broader unease about the tone and direction of news coverage. For now, the ratings race is on pause but the battle for attention continues, just without a scoreboard.
