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Prasar Bharati ordinance meant to revive MPs' panel, not against Gill, says I&B minister

The ordinance promulgated by the President on Saturday night reviving the original Prasar Bharati Act of 1990 will result in making the public service broadcaster ''autonomous as well as accountable and efficiently sound,'' Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Sunday.

At a press meet called to explain the government's reasons for issuing the ordinance, Swaraj denied that there was any move to by-pass the Rajya Sabha, which has still to take up the Prasar Bharati (Amendment) Bill which has been passed by the Lok Sabha. The ordinance will also remove the situation of uncertainty and vacuum with regard to Prasar Bharati employees, she added.

The minister emphasised that she was not against any individual and there was ''no malice, ill-will or prejudice against any individual'' in the move to promulgate the ordinance. She said the removal of any individual by revival of the original Act was merely coincidental. (The immediate effect of the ordinance was the removal of S S Gill as the chief executive officer of Prasar Bharati, who is in his seventies.)

However, Swaraj's statement did not cut much ice with her predecessor, S Jaipal Reddy (Janata Dal/United Front). He termed the ordinance ''unconstitutional, undemocratic, unethical and a fraud on Parliament,'' and added one of the two objectives was to remove its Gill.

Describing the measure as a ''black ordinance,'' he told reporters that it was a fraud on Parliament and unconstitutional in terms of procedure, undemocratic in terms of ideology and unethical in terms of values.

Reddy said the bill for amending the Prasar Bharati Act was passed by the Lok Sabha, but it was ''deliberately'' not taken to the Rajya Sabha though Rajya Sabha members kept ''clamouring'' for it. He pointed out that as many as 124 out of 225 members had also written a letter to the prime minister alleging that the Upper House was being circumvented and an ordinance was being planned ''behind the back of Parliament''.

''I charge Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with having shown contempt by ignoring the letter,'' he said, adding it is a ''black deed'' on the part of the government and a ''blot on the career of Vajpayee as prime minister.''

But Swaraj maintained that the primary aim of the ordinance was to revive the 22-member committee of members of Parliament since a public service broadcaster had to be accountable to Parliament.

Furthermore, the ordinance revives a 14-member Broadcasting Council which for the first time will provide a forum for making complaints against the broadcaster. She said that though the findings of the council were recommendatory, it was mandatory for All India Radio or Doordarshan to display the findings and give reasons for its acceptance or otherwise.

While announcing that AIR director-general O P Kejriwal had been asked to hold charge as the officiating chief executive officer, Swaraj said that the selection committee will be asked within a week to take steps to fill the five vacancies in the Prasar Bharati board, including that of CEO.

The selection committee comprising Vice-President Krishan Kant, Press Council of India chairman Justice P B Sawant, and T V R Shenoy who is the presidential nominee to select a chairman in place of Nikhil Chakravorty, who died about two months ago. She said that with the promulgation of the ordinance, three vacancies have been created: chief executive officer, member (personnel), and member (finance). The other two vacancies are those of the chairman and one part-time member (following the shifting or K Padmanabaiah to a gubernatorial post in the north).

Swaraj clarified that other part-time board members -- B G Verghese, Abid Hussain, U R Rao, Romila Thapar, and Rajendra Yadav -- will continue but their terms to ensure a rotational system will be fixed by the government.

The minister also said that the status of Prasar Bharati employees would become clear within a week when she meets their representatives to decide further formalities. Under the original Act, present employees of Prasar Bharati would be given an option to decide whether they wanted to remain government servants or join Prasar Bharati.

Charging the media with ''baseless speculation'' over the past few days when she had taken a conscious decision not to react, Swaraj was emphatic that the text of the ordinance was passed by the Union Cabinet ''unanimously, without controversy and very smoothly''. The concurrence of the law department had been obtained before taking it to the Cabinet. In fact, there was hardly any discussion since the subject had been discussed before.

Replying to questions, Swaraj said that Gill was free to go to court if he wished, and the government would defend its action if he did so.

She said there had been eight earlier precedents when a bill had been passed by one House and not by the other and an ordinance had been promulgated. She related the sequence of events when the bill was pending in the Lok Sabha and stressed that there had been no delay from her side and she had brought the bill as early as July 21, though it was ultimately passed only on July 31.

She said that August 1 and 2 were holidays and the bill was sent to the President for his approval (as provided for Article 117(3) in the case of bills with financial memoranda) only on August 4 afternoon. (The bill was to be sent to the president by 5 pm on August 3, but could not be delivered the next day because of an error on the part of the delivery man, she said.)

When asked why she did not bring it to the Rajya Sabha whose members had said they were prepared to extend the sitting beyond August 4 for this purpose, Swaraj retorted angrily: ''I'm not bound by their strategy. She said they could not just decide to scuttle the bill in the Lok Sabha and then ask for extended sitting in the Rajya Sabha. It was the government's prerogative on how it will conduct its legislative business,'' he said.

UNI