NEW DELHI, Apr 5:
Union Minister Manish Tewari today favoured setting up of a separate “techno-commercial” regulator for the rapidly expanding broadcasting sector, even as he maintained that government had no intention to control media content.
Addressing the first meeting of an expert committee on Prasar Bharati here, Tewari said he felt that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India which currently serves as the broadcasting regulator was not originally supposed to carry out this function.
“Government has no intention of putting a regulator in the statutory space. When I talk to my friends in the media, I tell them I spent a fair amount of time in telecom courts, I am conversant with the TRAI Act, and I find it a bit of oxymoron, though some of my colleagues don’t agree, that broadcasting was never supposed to be a part of the TRAI remit,” Tewari said.
“But be that as it may broadcasting the whole universe has grown and expanded in such an exponential manner that maybe the time has come to look on the techno-commercial side – I underscore, underline, put in inverted commas – on the techno- commercial side, the need for a separate broadcasting authority,” he added.
Tewari noted that these ideas were not policy pronouncements of government but his personal views. (PTI)
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