NEW DELHI: Even as corruption complaints against government departments rose by a whopping 67 per cent in 2016 over the previous year, the Government has denied any case of cartelisation in the tendering process of Prasar Bharati including All India Radio and Doordarshan.

DD recently floated tenders for DD Kashir and Arun Prabha, apart from tenders for Indian Conditional Access system for its DTH platform FreeDish.

Corruption complaints rose by 67 per cent, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has stated in its annual report tabled in the Parliament recently. The CVC noted that a total of 724 complaints were registered against the information and broadcasting ministry in 2016.

The information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu, however, told the Parliament that Prasar Bharati, including Doordarshan, is adopting a fair and transparent system for the tendering process.

Naidu added that Prasar Bharati had informed the MIB that it was following the rules and  procedures based on the Government guidelines including General Financial Rules (GFR) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) guidelines.

Doordarshan had floated a tender for selecting an agency for channel packaging work for DD Kashir. The last date of submission of bids is 19 April 2017 afternoon. The tenders for technical bids will be opened on 20 April in the afternoon.

DD Kashir programmes are beamed from Srinagar. An official of DD also denied reports that DD Urdu programmes were being used in DD Kashir.

Earlier this month, Doordarshan invited applications for an agency to undertake the channel packaging work for its new northeast channel, DD Arunprabha. The last bid date is 1 May 2017.

Arunprabha would would showcase richness, variety and diversity of local culture and would seamlessly integrate North East with the entire country.

Also, five companies including two from Delhi were earlier shortlisted as original equipment manufacturers for set-top boxes for Doordarshan’s FreeDish on the Indian Conditional Addressable System (iCAS). The manufacturers are: Modern Communications and Broadcast Systems of Gandhinagar in Gujarat; Velankani Electronics of Bangalore; BGM Holding of Ghaziabad; and KMTS Engineering and Millennium Technology, both from Delhi. The technology of iCAS has been designed by ByDesign of Bangalore.

Also Read:

DD Arunprabha: Bids invited for channel packaging

DD Kashir packaging agency tenders floated

FreeDish iCAS STB:  Modern Comm, Velankani, BGM, KMTS & Millennium OEMs shortlisted