| NEW
DELHI: Ending more than a decade of uncertainty, the Union Cabinet today decided
that all Central Government employees recruited for Akashvani or Doordarshan until
5 October 2007 are to be deemed as on deputation with effect from April 2000 until
their retirement Employees
recruited from 6 October 2007 will be deemed to be employees of Prasar Bharati
(Broadcasting Corporation of India) and subject to rules drawn up by the board
of the pubcaster. This
decision will benefit a total of around 38,000 employees who will get pensionary,
government health and accommodation and other benefits. The
decision taken by the Union Cabinet last night was communicated today by the Director-General
(Media and Communications) Uma Kant Mishra. While
welcoming the decision as a partial measure, National Federation of Akashvani
and Doordarshan Employees (NFADE) chairman Anilkumar S told indiantelevion.com
that all past and future employees should have been deemed as government employees.
Stressing
that the main demand of the NFADE was that Prasar Bharati should be rolled back,
he said the agitation would continue until all the employees became entitled to
the same benefits available to government employees. A meeting of the NFADE would
be held within the next day or two to decide the future course of action. Though
the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act was passed in June
1990, it was notified as a statutory corporation only from November 1997. Section
11 of the Act had given employees the option to decide whether they wanted to
join the Corporation or go back to the government, but no action was taken as
the rules for various categories of employees have not been drawn up in the past
twelve years. Prasar
Bharati sources told indiantelevision.com that until April 2000, the employees
had been deemed as full government employees and their status was changed to 'deemed
employees' from 1 April 2000. According
to the decision taken by the Cabinet, the date of 5 October 2007 has been taken
as the cut-off date as that was the date on which the Group of Ministers on Prasar
Bharati had taken a decision in this regard. Thus
all employees working on that date in vacant government posts and recruited as
per government rules ‘shall enjoy status equivalent to employees serving
on deemed deputation from the date of their joining the service under Akashvani
or Doordarshan till the time of their retirement’. However, they will not
be entitled to any deputation allowance.’ They
will be eligible for all facilities available to Central Government employees
(including general pool accommodation, Central Government Health Service Scheme,
and Kendriya Vidyalaya) and all retirement and pensionary benefits also irrespective
of whether Prasar Bharati is considered to be an autonomous organization.
‘However,
the employees recruited between 1 January 2004 and 4 October 2007 shall be covered
by the new pension ‘scheme made effective by the Central Government with
effect from 1 January 2004.’ All
the deemed deputation employees would be entitled to pay scales and all other
benefits as per their entitlement as Central Government employees.
Thus with effect
from 6 October 2007, all existing vacant government posts stand transferred to
Prasar Bharati and all persons recruited against those posts or who actually join
service in Prasar Bharati after that date (even though recruitment process or
the appointment may have been issued prior to 5 October 2007) shall be Prasar
Bharati employees and subject to such rules and regulations governing their employees
as may be approved by the pubcaster’s Board. The
Cabinet says the rationale for the decision is the difficulties that the employees
were facing in getting facilities they had been entitled to as government servants
prior to September 1997. The
employees under the aegis of the National Federation of Akashvani and Doordarshan
Employees - an umbrella body of 21 associations representing about 38,000 employees
–have been demanding either scrapping of the public service broadcaster and
going back to being a government media unit, or make suitable amendments in the
Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act 1990 to ensure they continue
getting the benefits they now enjoy. | 
