What is Hindusthan Samachar, the RSS-linked newswire service that will provide content to Doordarshan and AIR?

HS was registered as a cooperative society in 1956. In 1975, soon after the proclamation of the Emergency, Indira Gandhi’s government merged the four news agencies of the time — PTI, United News of India (UNI), Hindusthan Samachar, and Samachar Bharati — into a single news agency, Samachar.

The decision was reversed by the Janata Party government that came to power after the elections of 1977, but Indira’s government again targeted HS in 1983. Subhash Yadav, a senior Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh who later became Deputy Chief Minister of the state, was appointed Receiver.

HS challenged the government’s decision, and won the case in Delhi High Court in 1999. Thereafter, senior RSS leader Shrikant Joshi made attempts to revive the agency, and relaunched it.

Is the contract of HS with Prasar Bharati new?

No. It is only the renewal of an annual contract that HS has had with Prasar since February 2020. “We had a prior contract with Hindusthan Samachar, which was renewed this month,” Prasar CEO Gaurav Dwivedi told The Indian Express on Sunday.

Prasar had been taking feed from HS on a trial basis from 2017 onward, while negotiations for a contract continued. According to sources, the government realised during the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 that HS was able to release news content in several languages within a short time after receiving the original in English or Hindi.

Soon after Prasar entered into a contract with HS in February 2020, however, the Covid-19 pandemic hit India, and the first lockdown was imposed. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, one-year contracts for Rs 2 crore each were signed.

And what are the terms of the new contract?

Sources said the new contract is for 25-and-a-half months, from February 14, 2023 to March 31, 2025, for the supply of newsfeed in 12 languages. HS will supply 12 national news stories and 40 “local stories” in regional languages every day, officials said.

According to sources, a total Rs 7.70 crore will be paid to HS for the new contract period, that is, Rs 30.17 lakh per month.

Sources claimed that Prasar’s deal with HS is significantly better than its earlier arrangements with PTI and UNI, agencies that were contracted for Rs 9 crore and Rs 5 crore per annum for news in just two languages, English and Hindi.

According to these sources, HS provided services in Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Odiya, Bangla and Asomiya for Rs 2 crore per annum until February 13 this year. Free services in six other languages were bundled with this deal — in Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Nepali, and English.

Services in all these 12 languages will continue to be provided as part of the new 25-month deal.

What is the recent history of Hindusthan Samachar?

Shrikant Joshi, the RSS leader who revived HS, passed away in 2013. Thereafter, then Sarkaryawah (general secretary) of the RSS, Suresh (Bhaiyyaji) Joshi, made efforts to strengthen the agency.

At a conclave held in Ujjain on the banks of the Kshipra river in May 2016, a massive revival plan was devised. The top leadership of the RSS attended the conclave, which was concluded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As per the revival plan, a search was initiated for a resourceful person to run HS. The search zeroed in on Ravindra Kishore Sinha, who served as a Rajya Sabha MP of the BJP from Bihar from April 10, 2014 to April 9, 2020.

Sinha was made chairman of the board of HS, and he served in the position until April 2022, when he was replaced by Nagpur-based Arvind Mardikar.

Sinha runs a security agency called SIS Limited which, according to the company’s website, protects several Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) monuments and many government offices. The website claims the company “crossed ₹ 10,000 crore annual revenue mark” in 2022.

So who runs Hindusthan Samachar today?

According to the website of the New Delhi-headquartered agency, it has 22 news bureaus and 600 correspondents spread across the country. The Group Editor is Ram Bahadur Rai, a seasoned journalist who worked with Jansatta for several years, and is now chairman of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) under the central government’s Ministry of Culture.

Its editor is Jitendra Tiwari, who had earlier worked with Panchjanya, a weekly run by the Sangh Parivar. The seven-member board of directors is chaired by Arvind Mardikar.

Other members of the board are senior journalists Achyutanand Mishra, a former editor of Jansatta; Balbir Dutt, the founder editor of the Hindi daily Deshpran and the former editor of Ranchi Express; Manmohan Singh Chawla; Baba Madhok; and Ravindra Sanghvi.

Brajesh Jha is the executive editor.