The board of public broadcaster Prasar Bharati on Thursday dropped two proposals of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. It added that accepting them would “amount to infringing [its] autonomy”, the Hindustan Times reported.
One of the proposals was to appoint a serving IAS officer to the vacant position of a full-time member on the board through the Union Cabinet’s Appointments Committee. The board felt doing so would give the ministry a window to intrude into Prasar Bharati’s affairs, sources told The Indian Express.
This would “amount to erosion” of the Prasar Bharati Act and would “denigrate the office of the vice president”, board members reportedly said. The vice president of India heads the selection panel for the Prasar Bharati board. The Prasar Bharati Act of 1990 lays down the structure and appointment rules for members of the board.
The board also dropped the resolution to appoint journalists Siddharth Zarabi and Abhijit Majumder to head news operations, as the proposed salaries for them were “too exorbitant”, sources told The Indian Express.
A report on Wednesday had said that a high-level committee had zeroed in on Zarabi as head of TV news at DD News and Majumder as the chief editor of Prasar Bharati News Service. The organisation’s board met on Thursday to discuss their appointment and salaries, among the other proposals.
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