NEW DELHI: The level of digitisation has reached around 88 per cent in the 38 cities covered in fourteen states and one union territory for Phase II of Digital Addressable System (DAS), a top Information & Broadcasting ministry official tells Indiantelevision.com.

This includes seeding of set top boxes (STBs) done by direct-to-home (DTH) operators.

I&B ministry secretary Uday Kumar Varma reveals that fifteen to sixteen cities have achieved total digitisation.

However, he cautions that the government was still in the process of collating all the figures and would bring a detailed report after its review. The Secretary said he is personally in constant touch with the Nodal Officers and MSOs to ensure that the cities in remaining states also speed up the process of digitisation.

He clarified that while announcing the switch-off of analogue on 31 March, the Government said it would watch the situation for around two weeks and was now reviewing the reports coming being receiving on the achievement so far.

The Ministry had announced last week that analogue signals had been completely switched-off in the five states of Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Haryana, and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.

Stay continues to be in force in the cities of Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur, Hyderabad, and Visakhapatnam. The metropolis of Chennai which was part of Phase I also has a stay order in force.

The Karnataka and Gujarat High Courts had yesterday quashed petitions seeking extension of DAS thereby paving way for the analogue signals to be switched-off.