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Rajya Sabha TV (RSTV) and Lok Sabha TV (LSTV) — the two TV channels that broadcast the proceedings of the upper and lower Houses of Parliament, respectively — have been formally merged into a single entity called ‘Sansad TV’ from Monday.
According to an order dated 1 March 2021, issued by the new channel, the decision was jointly taken by Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
A retired IAS officer of the 1986 batch, Ravi Capoor, has been appointed as Sansad TV Chief Executive Officer for one year. Capoor has earlier served in the ministries of commerce, textiles and petroleum. He will be responsible for working out the final details of the merger.
Some officials in the erstwhile LSTV and RSTV said that the merger had been under discussion for years, and was meant to ease the financial burden resulting from duplicacy of efforts and resources between the two channels. According to some sources, it is unlikely that the merger will lead to any major job cuts.
Some sources told ThePrint that there could be two channels under Sansad TV — Sansad 1 and Sansad 2 — to give equal weight to live proceedings of both Houses, among other reasons. An officer said that Sansad 1 will be set to air Lok Sabha proceedings and Sansad 2 for Rajya Sabha proceedings. When Parliament is not in session, the first channel can air Hindi content and the second, English content.
Lok Sabha TV was launched in 2006 by then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, while Rajya Sabha TV in 2011. Apart from broadcasting the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament, the channels aired discussions and other programmes on a range of topics.
On 7 November 2019, a committee was constituted to chalk out the modalities of the merger, and preparing guidelines for pooling of resources and technology. The panel was headed by former Prasar Bharati Chairman A. Surya Prakash, and its members included additional secretary to the Rajya Sabha Secretariat A.A. Rao, Ganpati Bhatt of the Lok Sabha Secretariat, RSTV financial adviser Shikha Darbari, Manoj Kumar Pandey, and Dr Aashish Joshi, former LSTV CEO. The committee held several sessions with parliamentarians across parties.
Apart from airing the parliamentary proceedings, Sansad TV will air multiple daily and weekly programmes on news and current affairs, on the themes of democracy, and awareness of the Constitution, among others. During the times Parliament is not in session, there will be several common programmes telecast by the channels, sources said.
Sources: theprint.in, freepressjournal.in
Written by Siddhant Sharma
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