The Hindu : Star applies afresh for uplinking

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 23, 2003

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Star applies afresh for uplinking

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 22. A fresh application for uplinking Star News from India was submitted to the Government today; three days after the Kolkata-based ABP Limited and the international media baron, Rupert Murdoch's Star Group announced their joint venture in Media Content and Communications Services (MCCS).

The application was submitted to the Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry by the chairman of ABP Ltd., Aveek Sarkar, and the chief executive officer of Star India Ltd., Peter Mukherjea. The duo also followed it up with meetings with the Union Minister of State for I&B, Ravi Shankar Prasad, besides other senior officials in the Ministry. As per MCCS' application, Mr. Sarkar will be the chairman of the company and Mr. Mukherjea the director.

Five members of the Board of Directors have been named, and one is yet to be nominated. The five already on board are Arup Sarkar, A. Lahiri, Naresh Chandra, S. Nihal Singh and G. Subramanium. Raveena Raj Kohli will remain president of Star News, and Sanjay Pugalia — who was the News Director of the Channel — will now have the designation of Chief Editor.

The new venture — in which ABP Ltd. has the larger stake with 74 per cent equity; the remaining 26 per cent being with Star Group — is being launched with authorised share capital of Rs. 70 crores though only Rs. 1 lakh has been paid up as of now. Also, the application states that Star News will remain free-to-air.

Its earlier application for uplinking having run into rough weather because of outsourcing to companies that had seemingly been created with Star funds to side-step the uplinking guidelines, company officials have apparently told the Ministry that there would be no outsourcing.

"Prima facie, the structures we had objected to seem to have been dismantled'', officials said; maintaining that they were yet to study the application.

Since the application has to be cleared by the Foreign Investment Promotion Bureau and the directors' security cleared by the Home Ministry, the process could well extend beyond the September 28 deadline.

As per the notification on the revised guidelines, all news channels having FDI had to fall in line by September 28.

Star News had to scout for a major stakeholder after the Government decided on August 28 to revise the guidelines for the second time this year to mandate that 51 per cent of the total equity in a television news channel with FDI remains with one dominant Indian partner.

The second revision of the guidelines became necessary after the Ministry prima facie found the channel flouting the earlier guidelines — revised in March.

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