NEW DELHI, MARCH 16: Delighted at having got several corporate biggies to pick up the tab for the cricket match which will launch Doordarshan's new satellite sports channel on March 18, I&B Minister Pramod Mahajan said the Government would not be spending a single naya paisa on the event which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.``Everything is paid for,'' he said, while reeling off the prize money on offer to players in the day-and-night match between Azharuddin XI and Kumble XI: Rs 2 lakh to the winning team, Rs 1 lakh to the runners-up, Rs 50,000 to the man of the match, Rs 1 lakh to man who scores a half-century in 25 balls, Rs 1 lakh to the bowler who gets a hattrick, Rs 10,000 to the six which hits a billboard, Rs 5,000 to every six which doesn't, even Rs 50,000 to the best published photograph, Rs 25,000 to the second best published photograph.And who will foot the bill? Well, said Mahajan proudly, Sahara, Indian Airlines, ITDC, Pepsi. The air fare of the teams willbe borne by Indian Airlines and the stay by Maurya Sheraton. What's left? Oh, hospitality to the media in the VIP enclosure? That bill will be paid by Sahara.That taken care of, the Minister then went on to reel off a minute-to-minute detail of the 3 p.m. inauguration of DD Sports at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on March 18: from the Prime Minister's arrival, to a reception by ``non-cricketers like Suresh Kalmadi and Vijay Kumar Malhotra'', to compering by TV star Shekhar Suman, to a helicopter manoeuvre involving the switch-on of the channel, to a song written by poet Gulzar and finally a speech by Vajpayee and even after that, a laser show during the 7-7.40 p.m. dinner break.During this summary, of course, no Prasar Bharati official except the DD Engineering-in-Chief B.K. De was in sight. Neither was any member of the board which only last week had claimed absolute autonomy in its functioning. Mahajan brushed aside all problems being posed by journalists and called the launch a historic step for apublic service broadcaster. He promised to turn it into a 24-hour channel in two or three months, saying DD would purchase the rights to events as and when ``we get them''.He said DD Sports would not be showing only cricket but also kabaddi, kho-kho, wrestling, and hockey in a move that was bound to ``increase the number of gold medals won by India at the Olympics''. He added that the move had inspired such a feeling of swadeshi in former tennis ace Vijay Amritraj that he ``got in touch with me and promised to give us rights to a lot of sporting software he owns''.I&B sources, however, maintain that a sum of over Rs 1 crore had been taken a grant from the Finance Ministry for the March 19 ``cultural evening'' at the 15th century Hauz Khas monument built by Firuz Shah Tughlaq. The Minister had a lot to say about that too, including that the Prime Minister would be ``very much'' present there. He also insisted there would be no representation from Bollywood: ``There will be no star either big orsmall at the Satyamev Jayate event,'' he said.
