1. Home
2. Front Page

RS TV, LS TV mergedasSansad TV

KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 3/3/2021 10:35:12 AM

NEW DELHI, Mar 02: The Rajya Sabha TV and the Lok Sabha TV were merged on Tuesday as the 24x7 Sansad TV, with Assam cadres retired 1986 batch IAS officer Ravi Capoor as its chief executive officer (CEO). Capoor has been the textile secretary and joint commerce and industry secretary at the Centre and additional chief secretary of Assam.
The Sansad TV will run two different channels to telecast live the proceedings of both the Upper and the Lower Houses during their simultaneous sittings. Notwithstanding the merger, the two channels are still continuing separately with their separate teams.
The merger decision was taken jointly by Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, based on the report of a committee set up to look into the integration of the two channels. The committee had recommended the merger for a more focused and content-driven policy for viewers to know in detail about the functioning of the parliamentary institutions and democracy.
Under the new arrangement, the Sansad TV comes under full control of the Lok Sabha Speaker, who will run it with the assistance of Lok Sabha Secretary General Utpal Kumar Singh, with no say of the Rajya Sabha TV. It was Singh, a retired IAS officer of the Uttarakhand cadre, who asked the Speaker to make his 1986 batch IAS officer Capoor as the CEO of the Sansad Television.
With the formation of the Sansad TV, the services of Manoj Kumar Pandey, a retired Information Service officer, were terminated with immediate effect on March 1 and he shall be paid one month's professional fee in lieu of removal without notice, according to an order of the Rajya Sabha secretariat.
The first order of the Sansad Television issued on March 1 says Capoor will be "the CEO on contract for one year or until further orders, whichever is earlier."
The disclosure of the intender merger was made by Rajya Sabha secretary general Desh Deepak Verma at the 141st meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Belgrade on October 13.
The committee to consider the merger came after the Prime Minister's office (PMO) suggested to either merge the two separate TV channels or shut them down and let Doordarshan run a separate channel to cater to Parliament's coverage. The PMO had expressed concern over a lot of money wasted in the two TV channels providing varied coverage that has nothing to do with the functioning of the two Houses that function hardly for four months on an average in a year.
The Lok Sabha TV was launched in July 2006 as the brainchild of then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who felt the people have the right to know the actions of their elected representatives fully instead of the TV channels providing only glimpses of skirmishes in the House. Then Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari got a parallel Rajya Sabha channel started in August 2011.