As appointments to the Prasar Bharati Corporation go, there is nothing professional about them. On Friday, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, headed by Arun Jaitley, appointed Veena Jain Director-General of Doordarshan News on the terms and conditions set by the Union government. Such appointments are the norm rather than the exception.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the Chairman of the corporation, both kept in the dark about the appointment, refused to offer their comments, though officials in the Ministry tried to make it sound like a routine affair.
In the coming days, a flurry of appointments to the Prasar Bharati Board can be expected. Currently, four posts have been lying vacant for long, sources said. Two names under consideration, though The Hindu could not confirm it, are Ashok Tandon, who was media adviser to Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was Prime Minister, and singer Anup Jalota. If appointed, they will join Muzzafar Ali and Samir Kumar Barua, both appointed by the United Progressive Alliance government
Govt.’s sayThe government has had a say in appointing the head of the corporation since its inception in 1997, and for all talk of autonomy, even tweets expressing concern at the lack of it by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his government has not shied away from exercising control over the affairs of the corporation.
With the government appointing Ms. Jain, the Prasar Bharati Board, which includes the Chairman, the CEO and full-time and part-time members, has been rendered ineffectual. The order announcing her appointment was not marked to the Board. All these lead to some attendant questions on the relationship the Board enjoys with the government.
Sources say CEO Jawhar Sircar has been facing a tough time in getting his proposals cleared by the Board and the Ministry, which bankrolls the budget of the corporation. Not all is well between Mr. Sircar and senior officials of the Ministry. But Mr. Sircar’s term is secured by the Act, and sources believe the appointment is just another way of sidelining him.
In not informing the CEO and the Chairman about the appointment, the government has not been true to the spirit of the Prasar Bharati Act, which says appointment of members of the corporation, including directors-general of All India Radio and Doordarshan, will be done by the corporation after consultation with the recruitment Board.
The Modi government could have acted differently by expediting the means to form a recruitment Board, which has not been announced since the inception of the corporation.
The corporation has a sizeable number of cadres drawn from the Information Services over which the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has control, the Programme Services and the Engineering Services. Faced with dwindling advertising revenue and a dip in viewership, the recent appointments will be watched for the ability to turn around the fortunes of the corporation. Autonomy can take a walk.
