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The parliamentary panel was informed that, as on date, a total
of 60 applications had been received. Out of these, 38 eligible
applications had been sent to other ministries concerned for clearance
while letters of intent had been signed in 26 cases and licence
agreements signed in 10 cases.
Reddy’s fellow parliamentarians had expressed concerns about the
funding ability of the community/organisations in far-flung and
remote rural areas, since such services are run on a no-profit basis.
Consultative panel members also expressed concern over the restriction
of advertisement time at the rate of four minutes per hour leave
little chance of generating adequate funds to run such radio stations.
Some members felt that even the original start –up cost of Rs 400,000-
Rs 1 million may not be possible for rural communities and the government
should come out with initiatives to support such ventures.
Coming up with a pragmatic solution to the funding problems, one
of the members suggested that each MP may support at least two community
radio stations in his/her constituency from the fund made available
by the government for spending in their respective constituencies
for developmental work.
However, panel members suggested that adequate safeguards may be
created to check any misuse of community radio stations.
The members who attended today’s meeting included, Dinsha Patel,
film star Dharmendra, Satyanarayan Jatiya, Hannan Mollah, S Sudhakar
Reddy, Usha Verma, Bhartruhari Mahtab, P K Maheshwari, Vijay J Darda,
E M Sudarsana Natchiappan, Ajay Maroo, film star Shatrughan Sinha,
S C Chandran and Sanjay Raut.
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