After Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s visit to China, the least one would have expected from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry was for it to have a permanent correspondent posted close to Beijing. But by scrapping the post and creating a new one, I&B Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is likely to send the wrong signals to Beijing in his bid to send the right ones to Kabul.Prasad recently okayed the list of correspondents, reporting for Doordarshan and All India Radio, to be posted abroad. But as he rushed through the list, Prasad scrapped the Beijing post and, at the same time, created a post in Kabul. ‘‘It is a problem creating new posts as approval from the Finance Ministry and External Affairs Ministry has to be sought,’’ sources said.Prasad cleared the names of correspondents for Colombo, Dhaka, Dubai, Kathmandu and Kabul. The ministry, it is learnt, has also scrapped the post in Brussels, which has now gone to UK. Names for Washington and UK are yet to be appointed. It is also learnt that the Prasar Bharati Corporation is likely to tie up with Saeed Naqvi’s Third Eye TV to cover China, whenever the need arises. Incidentally, Naqvi had accompanied the PM to Beijing.
