Govt is killing Prasar Bharati, says Reddy

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, Feb 3: Senior Janata Dal leader S Jaipal Reddy today accused the BJP Government of using a two-pronged approach to ``kill'' the Prasar Bharati Corporation and to ``bury'' the Broadcasting Authority propoal.Reddy asked the Government to bring in the Broadcast Bill, proposing a Broadcast Regulatory Authority, during the Budget session of Parliament: ``I'm not opposed to DTH (Direct-to-Home TV) but licenses to DTH operators should be given by a quasi-judcial authority and not the government.'' Reddy alleged that Prasar Bharati was being used by the BJP-led Government to propagate its own partisan views. ``It's being saffronised by this Government which is putting its own men in key positions,'' he said.``Prasar Bharati has remained headless. It exists only on paper...the BJP is misusing it for suppressing unpleasant news and propagating partisan news,'' he said. Reddy, who brought into operation the 1990 Prasar Bharati Act aimed at granting autonomy to AIR and DD, said that the BJP was opposed to``culture of democratic institutions...and in that autonomous setups have no place.''

While the BJP-led coalition's national agenda for governance promised to make Prasar Bharati accountable to Parliament, Mahajan was now talking about making it accountable to Government and had called for a national debate on it, he said. There was no need for any such debate, he said, with the issue having been settled as far back as in 1948 when Jawaharlal Nehru had made it clear that Akashvani would enjoy full autonomy like the BBC. The call for a debate on Prasar Bharati, Reddy said, was ``as dishonest and hypocritical as Vajpayee's call for a debate on religious conversions.''

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