UF had set up quot;prachar bharatiquot; 8212; BJP

BJP vice president J P Mathur said autonomy did not mean allowing DD and AIR to violate the spirit of public broadcasting and becoming an extension counter of either the Congress or the Janata Dal.

Both Doordarshan and AIR were subsisting on enormous amounts of public funds. This automatically made them accountable to Parliament and the people not merely on functional aspects but also on how best to promote public broadcasting for its larger interests, he said.

The party also accused Islamic militants and fundamentalists of killing Trichurapalli party president S Sridhar. Mathur said the murder was in the same manneras that of Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad leader Paramasivam at Madurai a year back.

While regretting that the Tamil Nadu Government had not done much to prevent such killings, Mathur hoped the State Government would take appropriate measures to arrest the culprits.