In a bid to pitch India as an uplinking hub, the Government on Tuesday announced relaxation in guidelines for compliance for television channels and also made a 30-minute daily public interest broadcast mandatory, mainly for entertainment channels.
The 'Guidelines for Uplinking and Downlinking of Television Channels in India, 2022', which have been approved by the Union Cabinet, allow limited liability partnerships and companies to allow uplinking of foreign channels from Indian teleports for beaming content in countries covered by the satellite footprint.
The move is expected to allow television channels of Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal to uplink from India, instead of Singapore, the preferred uplinking hub for channels beamed in the subcontinent. Currently, only 30 channels are uplinked from India out of the total 897 registered with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, officials said.
"Requirement for seeking permission for live telecast of events has been done away with; only prior registration of events to be telecast live would be necessary," Sanjiv Shankar, Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) said in a presentation to the media here.
He said there would be no requirement of prior permission for change of language or conversion of mode of transmission from Standard Definition (SD) to High Definition (HD) or vice versa.
The channel will only have to inform the ministry about the changes, he said.
