GoM reaches consensus

Another significant member of the GoM, the Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, said: “We have taken a decision on DTH, but we are not announcing it. The announcement will be made only in the Cabinet meeting.” A Cabinet meeting is scheduled to be held at 11 am tomorrow.

Today, the first round of talks ended abruptly around noon, when the members left in a hurry just one hour after the meeting had begun. The group returned in the evening to sort out some of the thorny issues, which were pending for long.

Going by the smiling faces of the GoM members in the evening, it appeared that the second round of talks had something to appease all the members. But none of the GoM members spoke on what transpired at the meetings. Neither did anyone comment on the DTH modalities that the group was about to finalise.

After the morning session, the Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, who’s a key member in the GoM, said “I can’t divulge anything about what happened at the morning meet.” On being asked whether a final recommendation would be made on DTH today, he said: “Let’s hope so.”

Among those participating in today’s meeting were the Home Minister, L K Advani, the Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha, the Information Technology Minister, Pramod Mahajan, the Information and Broadcasting Minister, Sushma Swaraj, and the Law Minister, Arun Jaitley.

Although DTH was several times close to being implemented, something or the other kept delaying it. One of the main reasons why it was kept at bay for so long is that there was a rift in the government on how to enforce the DTH service. While a section of the government wanted Doordarshan to take control of DTH, another section wanted DTH as a free for all platform, and yet another group wanted a consortium of DD and private companies to manage DTH on a revenue-sharing basis.