New Delhi: The Union information and broadcasting ministry, headed by Smriti Irani, had to face flak and severe opposition from the top broadcasting regulatory body in the country, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, over its attempts to introduce new processing fee on the sector without due consultation process.
TRAI had opposed the process fee change regime brought about during the tenure of Ms Irani and asked the ministry why it was not consulted despite the TRAI being mandated of such matters as per the TRAI Act.
“As any change in the permission fee affects or alters the terms and conditions of the license or permission: the order dated 13 December 2017 of MIB should have been avoided, especially when recommendations of TRAI are mandatory in such cases, as per the provisions of the TRAI Act, 1997,” states the TRAI letter to the then I&B secretary N.K. Sinha.
Ms Irani, who has recently been divested of her I&B portfolio, faced severe criticism from the broadcasting sector over the past several months over the ministry’s refusal to issue new licenses and hike in processing fee for various services. Sources said the issue surfaced after Ms Irani's ministry introduced fresh processing fee for several services like name and logo change, transponder changes and live telecast by non-news channels.
The ministry which wanted Rs 1 lakh as live telecast fee per day for each channel, however, halved it after coming under severe criticism from the broadcasters. The norms were again revised -- without due consultation with TRAI -- regarding introduction of genres such as “religious” or “regional” channels. As a result, the processing fee for “religious” channels got reduced to Rs. 50,000 after several religious channels objected to the fee. And later they too were exempted by treating them as regional channels.
Sources said the TRAI missive goes on to highlight the point that under the provisions of the TRAI Act, it was the regulatory body which was mandated to make changes regarding the existing processing fee and charges that can be demanded from television channels for uplinking and downlinking norms.
During Mr Irani’s tenure, it is learnt the industry had also made an attempt to raise the issue with the PMO and expressed its displeasure over the impasse with the I&B ministry on issuing even routine approvals as she centralised all the approval process at her level.
