I&B Ministry
MIB & the business of TV channel licensing in 2024
MUMBAI: The Indian government has rejected more than half the number of licence applications it has approved in 2024. This was revealed by the information & broadcasting minister of state L. Murugan in the Rajya Sabha on 20 December 2024. This was in response to a question posed in the upper house of parliament.
According to him,the I&B ministry rejected 13 applications for channel licences in 2024, the highest number in the past five years. It has approved 22 applications for licences and renewed 34 of them in 2024.
The number of channel licence applications approved in 2024 was twice the number that were given the green light in 2023. .
2024 is also the year when the MIB cancelled the least number of TV channels in the past five years. The figure for 2024 is only one, while in 2021 it cancelled 24 TV licences.
Since, 2020 the government has rejected 34 applications for channel licences, of which 13 are accounted for by the rejections in 2024. 110 new channel licence applications have been approved since 2020, while 269 channel licence renewal applications were approved.
The list of channel licence applications approved, renewed, rejected and cancelled. as given by L. Murugan in the Rajya Sabha is in the table below::
I&B Ministry
Press Sewa Portal digitises 1.5 lakh records, streamlines periodical registrations: MIB
Online system spans 780 districts; Rs 5.6 crore penalties, 88,315 titles cancelled
NEW DELHI: India’s print media registry has quietly moved from dusty files to digital dashboards. The government has digitised more than 1.5 lakh historical records of newspapers and periodicals and shifted registrations fully online through the Press Sewa Portal.
Introduced under the Press and Registration of Periodicals (PRP) Act, 2023, the portal now handles all applications for registering periodicals, replacing the earlier paper-heavy system created under the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867, which has since been repealed.
The digital shift brings a wide range of services onto a single platform. Publishers can now register new periodicals, revise registrations, transfer ownership, file annual statements, pay penalties online and apply for circulation verification without navigating government offices.
As part of the rollout, specified authorities in 780 districts across India have been onboarded onto the platform. Since 1 March 2024, the portal has processed 11,081 applications and issued certificates across different categories.
The transition has also brought stronger compliance. According to government data, Rs 5.63 crore in penalties has been collected through the portal so far. States such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh account for some of the largest penalty collections.
At the same time, the authorities have carried out a major clean-up of inactive or non-compliant publications. A total of 88,315 periodicals have been cancelled nationwide, with Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi among the states reporting the highest number of cancellations.
The government says the system will continue to evolve based on feedback from users. The Press Registrar General of India (PRGI) regularly reviews suggestions to improve services and make compliance easier for publishers.
The full list of registered newspapers and periodicals is available on the PRGI website under the Registered Titles section.
The information was shared in a written reply in the Lok Sabha by minister of state for information and broadcasting and parliamentary affairs L Murugan, responding to a question from Damodar Agrawal.
