NEW DELHI: The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has proposed to earmark Rs one billion for development of community radio stations in the Twelfth Five Year Plan, of which Rs 900 million will be for grants or aid to help the CRS movement in the country.

Giving this information at the Third Community Radio Sammellan here, I&B Minister Manish Tewari said only Rs 100 million had been set aside for capacity building.

Tewari also said the proposal was that at least 500 more community radio stations should become operational during the Twelfth Plan.

Meanwhile, he said the Ministry had taken the initiative to promote the streamlining and simplification of Community Radio empanelment through Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) thereby ensuring that the empanelled stations got a fair share of Government advertisements. DAVP had so far allocated around Rs 60 million in commercial advertisements to CRS.

The Minister was speaking at the valedictory function of the Sammellan, at which he also gave away awards in five different categories to different CRS all over the country.

Later talking to the media, the Minister admitted that while the Government was willing to permit CRS to broadcast news bulletins of All India Radio as was being done in the Third Phase of FM expansion, this would need Cabinet approval.

At the outset, he said that permitting CRS to make their own news bulletins would create other difficulties. He gave the example of non-news television channels which he said managed to find different ways of giving news and the difference between the general entertainment channels and news channels was getting blurred.

He said that the CRS movement was very important in India today. While the Government had its organs for conveying its messages and programmes to the people, CRS could provide a two-way interaction by conveying what the people wanted. He said there was growing impatience and intolerance and people wanted to find a voice.

He said CRS could also highlight local issues that the government could then pay attention to. This effort has to be led by the community and not by the government, he added.

For his part, he said the Ministry had adopted a holistic approach to CRS. It wanted to work out a system to give assistance to new CRS to come up. He also wanted the CRS to draw up a code of ethics for themselves. The Ministry was also working on its own relationship with CRS.

The Minister also elaborated on the efforts being made by the Ministry in coordinating relevant issues with the Communications & Information Technology Ministry with regard to better frequency allocation plan for the CRSs.

He said it was likely that the Department of Telecom would announce the spectrum waiver decision shortly.

The need to facilitate a vibrant business model was in the offing to ensure the sustainability of the movement.

Earlier Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) Supriya Sahu said the Ministry was very keen on promoting CRS and gave example of having cleared 53 CRS proposals in just 24 hours soon after Tewari had become Minister. She stressed the need for deep involvement of the community if the movement had to grow. She wanted the stakeholders to draw up a Charter for themselves to serve as a Code of Ethics.

NEW DELHI: Community radio stations can re-transmit All India Radio?s (AIR) new bulletins.

However, the Government has once again turned down the demand for airing of local news bulletins.

Information and Broadcasting Ministry Secretary Uday Kumar Varma said: ?Even for FM which is a far more commercial venture, we have not allowed news which they can create on their own, but we have in the proposed policy said that they could perhaps use the AIR news. I am willing to offer that to you.?

Varma said it was not possible to permit creation of local news as the Ministry did not have the mechanism to monitor the channels. He said creation of local news was a very sensitive issue. ?You will realise that in a country like India, where we have no mechanism to know what is going on, if some damage is done, we?ll not know for a long time.? On the other hand, he said, it could also be argued that people who ran Community Radio stations are responsible and could be trusted.

On the spectrum fee front, the Government has taken a decision to waive them for community radio stations, though the orders in this connection will be announced as soon as the Telecom Ministry completes the necessary formalities. The spectrum fee of Rs 19,000 had recently been increased to Rs 91,000 and posed a major burden on the CR stations.

?Our feedback is that the spectrum fee has been waived but there are certain procedures which are required. Those procedures are underway and soon - I really can?t make a commitment because it is not in my hands - but it is expected that the complete waiver of the spectrum fee will become a reality very very shortly,? said Varma.