The Hindu : Uplinking guidelines revised

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 23, 2003

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Uplinking guidelines revised

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 22. For the second time this year, the Central Government today revised the guidelines for satellite uplinking for news channels with foreign investment/participation to ensure that 51 per cent of the total equity in any such company remains with one dominant Indian partner. While this brings the uplinking policy on a par with the print media having foreign investment/participation, additional safeguards have been incorporated, "necessitating another amendment to the existing print guidelines".

This was announced here by the Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Ravi Shankar Prasad, after a meeting with the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, besides other members of the Group of Ministers set up for ``revising the guidelines'', the Union Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, and the Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley.

As per the new guidelines, the 51 per cent equity held by the dominant Indian partner excludes any holding by Indian banks and financial institutions.

While this shareholder can be an individual, "we have made it clear that in case it is a company or a group of companies, the shareholders — be it resident Indian, Hindu undivided family or a relative as defined under Section 6 of the Companies Act — either singly or in combination must hold at least 51 per cent of the shares and these group of companies must be under the same management and control," the Minister said.

The two additional safeguards incorporated into the uplinking guidelines pertain to appointments and operational control. All appointments of key personnel — executive and editorial — should be made by the applicant company without any reference to any foreign company. And the applicant company must have complete operational independence and control over its resources and assets, and adequate financial strength for running a news channel. Also, three-fourths of the directors should be Indians, but representation on the Board will be proportionate to the extent of equity.

According to Mr. Prasad, the Government also decided "in principle" to amend the guidelines for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the print media to incorporate the two safeguards and create a level-playing field for both the print and television media.

Consequent to this revision, all news channels with foreign investment/participation including the international media baron, Rupert Murdoch's Star News will be given a month's time to comply with the new regime from the day it is notified.

This is the second time this year that Star News' decision to uplink from India on its own has forced the Government to revise the guidelines. They were first revised in March last as per which Star News had to scale down foreign equity in the wholly foreign-owned channel to 26 per cent.

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