State govts add to AIR financial woes

In a year when All India Radio is in the throes of its worst financial crisis, several state governments have further added to its woes. Thi...

In a year when All India Radio is in the throes of its worst financial crisis, several state governments have further added to its woes. This year, the public broadcaster saw a Rs 140-crore cut in its budget, and had to resort to drastic in-house measures such as withdrawing water dispensers, stationary, newspapers and periodicals from a section of its staff. ‘‘The situation is serious,’’ admits Prasar Bharti CEO, K.S. Sarma, ‘‘A series of fresh austerity measures have been taken and we have written to the Ministry of Finance for additional grants.’’

But there is an even more serious angle to AIR’s financial tangle, and perhaps that of Doordarshan’s as well. Even as AIR was declared a part of the Prasar Bharti Corporation some three years ago, its ‘‘assets’’ (290 buildings and stations) have yet not been formally transfered to it. But this has not prevented state governments from treating it like an autonomous entity and slapping huge demands of rentals, property tax and service tax.

Besides these, two state governments have begun levying additional electricity surcharge and even tower tax, all of which the Corporation is contesting.

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On last count, 14 such demands had been slapped on AIR from 14 stations, the largest being one for Rs 39 crore for acculumated property tax from the Tamil Nadu government.

Says Brijeshwar Singh, AIR’s director general, ‘‘Some daunting demands are coming to us in the difficult transition phase. We are challenging the demands since the properties are yet in the process of being tranferred. As far as AIR is concerned, there is 0 per cent benefit from the assets since we cannot yet put them to commercial use.’’

AIR officials point out that even when the stations are transferred to them, far-flung radio stations in places like Kargil and Rewa can hardly be expected to reap rich commercial dividents. Besides West Bengal, the stations which have raised bills for property tax from AIR are Bikaner (Rs 5.9 crore), Rewa (Rs 3.5 lakh), Shahdol (Rs 2.2 lakh), Udaipur (Rs 1.5 crore), Jodhpur (Rs 10.5 lakh) and Lucknow (Rs 55.4 lakh).

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More

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