I&B Ministry
NK Sinha moves to I&B, Garg & Sundarajan are economic affairs & telecom secys
MUMBAI: The Indian government, in a crucial move, has announced that the senior Bihar cadre IAS officer and culture secretary N K Sinha will take over as the secretary in the ministry of information and broadcasting. Sinha will take over in the ministry headed by union minister M Venkaiah Naidu while the incumbent Ajay Mittal will be shifted as secretary DoPT, PTI reported.
Fifteen new secretaries have been appointed to various central departments as part of a major bureaucratic reshuffle. Subhash Chandra Garg, who is the executive director of the World Bank, will take over as the secretary of the department of economic affairs from Shaktikanta Das — who has retired.
The other major appointments, approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, include Aruna Sundarajan, a Kerala cadre IAS officer, as the telecom secretary, and Ajay Kumar Bhalla, an Assam-Meghalaya cadre IAS officer, as Power Secretary. While Sundarajan was Secretary, Electronics and Information Technology, Bhalla is currently Director-General, Foreign Trade.
The committee also gave its nod for the appointment of Rajiv Gauba, a Jharkhand cadre IAS officer, as the next Home Secretary. He will take over from Rajiv Mehrishi on August 30. Until then Gauba will serve as Officer on Special Duty in the Home Ministry.
Meanwhile, Ajay Prakash Sawhney, an Andhra Pradesh cadre IAS officer, will be the new Electronics & IT Secretary. He was earlier Additional Secretary in the Petroleum Ministry. Yudhvir Singh Malik, a 1983 Haryana batch IAS officer, will be the new Road Transport and Highways Secretary. He was earlier NHAI’s Chairman.
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.
