The Hindu : INS urges abolition of customs duty on newsprint

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 17, 2003

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INS urges abolition of customs duty on newsprint

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 16. A high-level delegation of the Indian Newspaper Society today called on the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and sought the abolition of customs duty on newsprint, since the newspaper industry was facing financial problems because of a variety of factors such as erosion in advertising revenues due to the increasing competition from the electronic media.

The delegation led by the INS president, Abhay Chhajlani, also called for a reduction in the customs duty for certain types of printing machines and acceptance of commercial rates for release of advertisements through the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

In addition, it wanted the wage boards for journalists and non-journalists to be done away with, as the implementation of their recommendations was imposing a heavy burden on the industry. The delegation also noted that such statutory wage boards no longer existed for any other industry.

An INS press release said that the Prime Minister assured the delegation that the Government would consider the various issues raised by them and take appropriate action. The meeting was held at the Prime Minister's residence this evening.

The delegation included M.P. Veerendrakumar (Mathrubhumi), Vishwa Bandhu Gupta (Daily Tej), P.K. Lahiri (Secretary-General, INS), Mahendra Mohan Gupta (Dainik Jagran), R. Lakshmipathy (Dinamalar), Girish Agarwal (Dainik Bhaskar), Hormusji N. Cama (Bombay Samachar), Bharat Kapadia (Chitralekha), Jagjit Singh Dardi (Daily Charhdikala), Ramawatar Gupta (Sanmarg), R.N. Gupta (The Tribune), Rajan Kohli (Hindustan Times), Gulab Kothari (Rajasthan Patrika), Atul Maheswari (Amar Ujala), N. Murali (The Hindu) and V. Murali (Kalki).

The other members of the delegation were: Paresh Nath (Woman's Era), Jose Thomas Pattara (Deepika), Satya Paul (Samaj), T. Venkattram Reddy (Deccan Chronicle), P.K. Roy (Aajkaal), D.D. Purkayastha (Anand Bazar Patrika), Bahubali S. Shah (Gujarat Samachar), M. Venkataraman (The Times of India), Kundan R. Vyas (Vyapar), T. Satish U. Pai (Udayavani), Tariq Ansari (Mid-day), Vandan A. Potnis (Gavakari), Bharat Patel (Sandhya Prakash), Yashwant N. Shah (Jai Hind), Mohini Bhullar (India Today) and Sakti Dasgupta (Bartman).

Mr. Chahjlani thanked the Prime Minister on behalf of the newspaper industry for sparing his valuable time to meet the delegation and affording an opportunity to the members to express their views.

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