West Bengal chief minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee a.k.a. Didi is not the only one who wants a dedicated channel to propagate her and party’s views.
Several UPA ministers too have made similar requests to the government to make the common man aware of their “ministries’ achievements” and “people friendly policies”.
These include agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, Jairam Ramesh (rural development), Kapil Sibal (HRD) and culture minister Kumari Selja.
Sources said the ministers were of the view that a dedicated channel was required due to the specialised nature of their domains.
“It was felt that the national broadcaster [Doordarshan] was unable to do justice to the demands of these ministries,” they said.
The HRD ministry has written to the department of space seeking two transponders from Isro as it plans to start 50 subject-specific interactive education channels that will telecast lectures by experts.
The agriculture ministry has proposed that with more than 70 per cent of the Indian population dependent on farming a specialised channel was needed to serve it.
The NCP chief-led ministry has said technical programmes regarding agriculture needed to be beamed more frequently. It felt capsules such as Krishi Darshan on Doordarshan were not equipped to deal with the needs of today’s agricultural sector.
The culture ministry wants to “document the diversity of our country for future generations” and has cited similar channels run in other countries.
However, several of these channels are stuck at the proposal level before the planning commission. It is understood that the plan panel is reluctant to give the green signal as setting up such channels will cost up to Rs200 crore each.