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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, JAN 28: The Government today reconstituted the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India TRAI with former State Bank of India chairman M S Verma as the new chairperson.
No member from the dissolved regulatory body, except former Telecom Commission member R R N Prasad, has found place in the reconstituted TRAI which has two full-time and two part-time directors, official sources said today.
Prasad has been appointed as a full-time member for a term of two years, while all others have been given a term of three years.
Other members of the new regulatory body are director-general of the National Council for Applied Economic Research NCAER Rakesh Mohan and director-general of National Informatics Centre NIC and special secretary in the Ministry of Information Technology Dr N Seshagiri.
The other member of TRAI is the chairman of Central Board of Direct Taxes Ravi Kant.
Kant and Prasad have been appointed as full-time directors, while Mohan and Seshagiri will be part-time directors, officialsources added.However, the proposed Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal has not yet been constituted.
Government decided to reconstitute TRAI by bifurcating it into a regulatory body and a dispute settlement tribunal on January 19, after the sub-group led by Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley gave recommendations to this effect.
The seven-member regulatory body has been downsized to a body with three full-time members, including the chairman, and two part-time members.The ordinance amending the TRAI Act, 1997 has been notified on January 25. The ordinance has given scope for considering the members of the dissolved TRAI for re-appointment in the proposed bodies.
