Centre approves guidelines for uplinking, downlinking of TV channels in India
30 mins of ‘national interest’ content daily made mandatory for TV channels
New Delhi, Nov 9: In a bid to pitch India as an uplinking hub, the government on Tuesday announced relaxation in guidelines for compliance for television channels and also made a 30-minute daily public interest broadcast mandatory, mainly for entertainment channels.
The 'Guidelines for Uplinking and Downlinking of Television Channels in India, 2022', which have been approved by the Union Cabinet, allow limited liability partnerships and companies to allow uplinking of foreign channels from Indian teleports for beaming content in countries covered by the satellite footprint.
The move is expected to allow television channels of Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal to uplink from India, instead of Singapore, the preferred uplinking hub for channels beamed in the subcontinent.
Currently, only 30 channels are uplinked from India out of the total 897 registered with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, officials said.
"Requirement for seeking permission for live telecast of events has been done away with; only prior registration of events to be telecast live would be necessary," Sanjiv Shankar, Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) said in a presentation to the media here.
He said there would be no requirement of prior permission for change of language or conversion of mode of transmission from Standard Definition (SD) to High Definition (HD) or vice versa.
The channel will only have to inform the ministry about the changes, he said.
The guidelines were first issued in 2005 and revised in 2011. The current revision has taken place after 11 years after taking into account the technological advances in the interim period.
In case of emergency, for a company/ LLP with only two Directors/Partners, changes can be done subject to security clearance post such appointment, to enable business decision making.
The new guidelines state that a company can use news gathering equipment other than Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG), such as optic fibre, back pack, mobile, for which no separate permission would be necessary.
The guidelines state that electronic news gathering devices can be used.
Television channels will have to broadcast 30 minutes of public interest content every day on themes of national interest such as education and spread of literacy, agriculture and rural development, health and family welfare, science and technology, welfare of women, welfare of the weaker sections of the society, protection of environment and of cultural heritage and national integration.
"It is not that the government will give any programmes to the television channels for broadcasting under public interest content. The channels are free to create their own content on the themes mentioned in the guidelines," I&B Secretary Apurva Chandra said.
The guidelines also grant permission for a news agency for a five year period against one year at present.
The guidelines also make it mandatory for TV Channels uplinking in frequency band other than C-band to encrypt their signals.
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Cabinet approves classical language status to five languages, including Marathi and Bengali
New Delhi, Oct 3: The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved conferring classical language status to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali languages.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"This is a historical decision and it goes very well with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA government's philosophy of taking pride in our culture, taking pride in our heritage and taking pride in all the Indian languages and the rich heritage that we have," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a cabinet briefing.
Classical languages serve as a custodian of Bharat's profound and ancient cultural heritage, embodying the essence of each community's historical and cultural milestone, the government said.
In a statement, it said the inclusion of Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali in the classical language category will create significant employment opportunities, particularly in academic and research fields.
Additionally, the preservation, documentation and digitisation of ancient texts of these languages will generate jobs in archiving, translation, publishing and digital media, the government said.
The primary states involved are Maharashtra (Marathi), Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh (Pali and Prakrit), West Bengal (Bengali) and Assam (Assamese), while the broader cultural and academic impact will extend nationally and internationally, the statement said.
On October 12, 2004, the Government of India decided to create a new category of languages as "classical languages", declared Tamil a classical language and set criteria for according the status.
These criteria were -- high antiquity of its early texts or recorded history over a thousand years, a body of ancient literature or texts which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers, and literary tradition must be original and not borrowed from another speech community.
Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia were later given the classical language status.
A Linguistic Experts Committee (LEC) was constituted under Sahitya Akademi by the Ministry of Culture in November 2004 to examine the proposed languages for the classical language status. The criteria were revised in November 2005.
About the inclusion of Marathi in this category, the statement said a proposal was received from the Maharashtra government in 2013, requesting classical language status to Marathi and it was forwarded to the LEC.
The LEC recommended Marathi for classical language status.
Assembly elections in Maharashtra are slated to take place soon and this is a major poll issue in the state.
During inter-ministerial consultations in 2017 on the draft note for Cabinet for conferring classical status to the Marathi language, the Home Ministry advised that the criteria be revised and made stricter.
The PMO, vide its comment, said an exercise may be conducted to find out how many other languages are likely to become eligible.
In the meantime, proposals were also received from Bihar, Assam and West Bengal to confer classical language status to Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali.
Accordingly, the LEC, under Sahitya Akademi, in a meeting on July 25, 2024, unanimously revised the criteria. Sahitya Akademi has been appointed as the nodal agency for the LEC.
The committee recommended Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali languages to be fulfilling the revised criteria and be considered as a Classical Language, the statement said.
The Education Ministry has taken various steps to promote classical languages. Three central universities were established in 2020 through an Act of Parliament for the promotion of Sanskrit language, it added.
The Central Institute of Classical Tamil was set up to facilitate the translation of ancient Tamil texts, promote research and offer courses for university students and language scholars. To further enhance the study and preservation of Classical Languages, the Centres for Excellence for Studies in Classical Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and Odia were established under the auspices of the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysuru.
