The Hindu : Allegations of irregularities at Srinagar Doordarshan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 23, 2003

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Allegations of irregularities at Srinagar Doordarshan

By Shujaat Bukhari

SRINAGAR JUNE 22. The fears of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting, and Communication over the functioning of the Srinagar Doordarshan Kendra may prove right if the latest round of allegations about irregularities in the station is any indicator.

The Committee chairman, Somnath Chatterjee, before leaving Srinagar said that the functioning of Radio Kashmir was satisfactory but there were a number of complaints about Doordarshan. Mr Chatterjee, sources said, had failed to get any reply from the DD authorities on various issues. "Even the State Chief Secretary complained that the programmes are not up to the mark," he said.

Now, large-scale irregularities have been reported in the distribution of programmes under the Complete Broadcast Rights programme. So far, no transparent mechanism has been adopted and it is alleged that the programmes are being "gifted" to either influential people, or those who have the "potential" to "blackmail" the authorities.

The proposals for these programmes, for which the budget runs into crores of rupees, were invited without any wide media coverage and were confined to the DD's announcements, heard only by its officials, the `erstwhile brokers" and non-professionals. Sources said that 1,200 proposals had been submitted and that an arbitrary method was adopted in categorising the producers. "Some persons (non-professions) have been allotted quite a number of episodes while the professionals are being ignored under the pretext of interviews and presentations," said an aggrieved producer. Though the allotments have not been made official as yet, sources said those who have been sounded have already begun making productions.

"The beneficiaries of the allotments are those who could be potential threats or who can blackmail them (the authorities)", said another aspiring producer, a post-graduate in mass communication and journalism.

The authorities, it is learnt, have also not constituted any expert committee to scrutinise the proposals. Repeated attempts to contact the programme chief failed.

The change of guard at DD Srinagar two years ago had revived the hopes of genuine producers; but no significant change has been visible.

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