BROADCASTING LEGISLATION: PERMANENT DELAY LIKELY

Foreign wannabe investors may well have to wait longer than planned for broadcasting regulation, as the BJP government may not be able to push it through even in the next session of Parliament. The government failed to get regulations relating to patents and insurance passed in Parliament during the just-concluded winter session. And these were regulations that had been initiated by the Congress government when it was in power a couple of years ago.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his colleagues failed to muster support from the Congress and the left parties in Parliament for the two pieces of legislation. There was opposition to these from certain quarters within the BJP party itself. The party also failed to get an extension of the winter session of Parliament, so that it could attempt to get them passed.

Observers believe that the situation is going to be no different for the Broadcasting Bill, which has been pending passage through Parliament for the past year and a half. Committees have gone into it and have offered suggestions, none of which have been incorporated in the Bill. What may delay the Broadcasting bill further is Vajpayee's insistence that a comprehensive policy needs to be drawn up taking into consideration the convergence of telecom, television and the Internet. The government is still working on getting its telecom and Internet regulation in order. The broadcasting bill is surely some time away.

While the party has earlier this month appointed Pramod Mahajan as the information and broadcasting (I&B) minister , his initial focus is going to be on getting the BJP and Vajpayee in good light with the public and not on legislation. That task has been left to his junior, I&B minister of state, M.A. Naqvi who has constantly been voicing that regulation will be passed by the next session of parliament.

However, his word carries comparatively less weight in government. He had earlier announced that the Broadcasting Bill would see the light of day in the winter session of Parliament. Mahajan has made a couple of announcements relating to media, one of which got him flak. The first was on the Prasar Bharati (the holding company of state-owned broadcasters Doordarshan and All India Radio) ordinance, which he said would be allowed to lapse. He made this statement outside of Parliament and later retracted it when he got some stick from other political parties in the Upper House of parliament. The previous I&B minister Sushma Swaraj had promulgated an ordinance, which allowed her to sack the chief executive of Prasar Bharati, apart from making it answerable to politicians. The amended Prasar Bharati Act was meant to be introduced during the just concluded winter session but wasn't.

The second pronouncement that Mahajan has made is that the government is going to stand by the 1955 Cabinet decision not allowing foreigners to invest in the print media. He has also been caught in the midst of crossfire relating to the film Fire, which has been sent back to the censors for additional cuts, following protests from political parties.

What will also hold the government back is the fact that it will have its hands full when Parliament opens for the Budget session in a couple of months as it has to get several pending legislations introduced and passed. Broadcasting, despite Naqvi's constant reminders, may well be postponed to the monsoon session. Or even later. It will require tremendous political will and maneuvering from the BJP to get broadcasting legislation passed earlier.

With the odds stacked against it, the BJP government may hence pass take it upon itself to lift curbs and impediments to broadcasters by passing ordinances or orders. Bearing this in mind, News Television head R. Basu has been increasingly hard-selling Ku-band direct-to-home television to I&B bureaucrats and any minister willing to give him an ear. News Television had announced its ISkyB DTH project last year but that was scuttled when the government put a ban on Ku-band reception equipment and then finally disallowed transmission in the 4,800 MHz range by any private parties.