NEW DELHI: India’s television pubcaster Doordarshan, managed by Prasar Bharati, has begun an annual exercise to convey to the government the level of funding it could need for next financial year beginning April 1, 2017.
While directing the various units and centres under DD to send in their financial demands, a communiqué from the DD Directorate clarified that such budgeting should not include any (financial) provisions for vacant posts.
Prasar Bharati, which runs DD and All India Radio, like many other public broadcasters of the world, is funded with public money that the government allocates to it as part of the country’s annual budgetary
proposals.
The official communication from DD head office added that any liabilities from previous year’s budgetary support should be detailed, including separately listing reasons for exceeding allocated budgets for the financial year 2015-16 as also enumerating the likely effect that payment of certain government allowances, bonuses and increased payout to employees likely to have.
It is estimated that Prasar Bharati has around 40,000 employees on its rolls.
Though Prasar Bharat is an autonomous organisation, formed under an Act of Parliament of 1990 that was notified only in 1997 paving the way for its formal set up, a majority of its employees are still categorised as government officials, a hangover of pre-Prasar Bharati days when DD and AIR were media units of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB). Hence, any revision of pay scales for government officials, as notified earlier this year, has an effect of Prasar Bharati officials too.
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