I&B Ministry
UR Rao quits as Prasar Bharati chairman
NEW DELHI: UR Rao, chairman of the Prasar Bharati Corporation, has put in his papers, citing personal reasons.
Sources in Prasar Bharati admitted today that Prof Rao, a former head of the country’s premier space research institute, ISRO, has sent in his resignation to the information and broadcasting ministry.
However, there was no official communication from the Prasar Bharati in this regard. Nor from the ministry.
Prof. Rao was chosen as the chairman of the Prasar Bharati board by a selection committee, comprising the vice-president of India, Press Council chairman and a government nominee, after a lot of deliberation.
Prasar Bharati got its second chairman more than a year after its first chairman died a couple of years back.
If the resignation is accepted, then the selection committee, likely to have new members with the new vice-president too having taken over, will have to meet to zero down on another candidate for the chairman’s post of Prasar Bharati. BG Verghese, a veteran journalist and seniormost member of the board, may be made acting chairman once Rao’s resignation is accepted by the government, the Indian Express has reported.
I&B Ministry
PIB Fact Check Unit flags 2,913 fake claims, blocks 1,400 URLs
Government steps up misinformation fight with FCU and IT Rules framework.
MUMBAI: In the age of viral forwards and deepfake déjà vu, the government’s fact-checkers are working overtime to separate fact from fiction. India’s Press Information Bureau Fact Check Unit (FCU), operating under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, has flagged a total of 2,913 instances of fake news and misinformation linked to the Central Government, highlighting the growing scale of the information battle in the digital era.
Tasked with identifying misleading content from AI-generated videos and deepfakes to forged notifications, letters and spoofed websites, the FCU verifies claims using authorised sources before publishing corrections across its social media channels. These include platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Threads and WhatsApp, turning the government’s digital presence into a real-time myth-busting network.
But the effort is not just top-down. The FCU has also been nudging citizens to play detective, encouraging users to report suspicious content for verification. The idea is simple: in a landscape where misinformation travels faster than facts, crowd-sourced vigilance can act as an early warning system.
The scale of intervention became particularly visible during Operation Sindoor, when the unit identified and countered a surge of misleading and hostile narratives circulating online. Alongside publishing verified information, the Ministry directed the blocking of more than 1,400 URLs on digital platforms, an aggressive move aimed at containing the spread of false and potentially harmful content.
The broader regulatory backbone for this effort lies in the Information Technology Rules 2021, which set out a Code of Ethics for digital publishers and establish a three-tier grievance redressal mechanism. The framework is designed to hold publishers of news and online curated content accountable, even as the ecosystem grows increasingly complex.
The update was shared in the Lok Sabha by L. Murugan, minister of state for information and broadcasting, in response to a question raised by V. K. Sreekandan.
Together, the numbers tell a clear story: misinformation is no longer a fringe problem but a mainstream challenge. And as the lines between real and manipulated content continue to blur, the battle for credibility is being fought not just in newsrooms but across every screen in the country.
