NEW DELHI: Community radio stations can re-transmit news of All India Radio bulletins, even as the government once again turned down the demand for airing of local news bulletins.

The government has also taken a decision to waive spectrum fee 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.

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 that they could perhaps use the AIR news. I am willing to offer that to you.”

He said, creation of local news was a very sensitive issue and it was not possible to permit creation of local news as the Ministry did not have the mechanism to monitor the channels. “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.

Inaugurating the Third Community Radio Sammellan in Delhi, Varma also said the Ministry was working towards a single-window clearance regime for CRS. At present, permissions or clearances had to be obtained from the WTC of Telecom Department, I&B, Home, and Defence Ministries, and even Rural Development, Agriculture or Human Resource Ministries for niche channels.

The primary aim was to create an enabling environment, but CRS had to be a collective effort and it was for the people to take it forward.

The formal opening of the Sammelan on the theme of ‘Celebrating a decade of people’s voices’ was also attended by I&B Additional Secretary J S Mathur, Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) Supriya Sahu, OneWorld Foundation India head Rajiv Tikoo. Varma released the ‘CR Compendium 2013’, and also inaugurated an exhibition of put up by some national and international organizations including UNICEF and UNESCO.

On spectrum, he said: “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.”

The Sammellan, organised by the I&B Ministry in association with OneWorld Foundation India from 9-11 February at Vigyan Bhavan, will see awards being presented for the first time in five categories to the CRS.

Varma listed some priorities for CR sector. He said spectrum was a very valuable resource and therefore should be put to the best use.  Stressing on sustainability, he said CR stations should be able to run for a long time and not just get licences and shut shop within a few months. The sector did not need non-serious players.

He said the Ministry would consider some sort of financial assistance for CRS which could be in the form or grants or loans, or the Ministry standing as guarantor if CRS took loans from nationalized banks. A mechanism that was easy to work would have to be planned, and equity, fairness, transparency, and efficiency was very important.

The Ministry had already increased its help in terms of permitting CRS to take advertisements from the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity which had increased its payments from Rs one per second to Rs four per second.

The major aim of CRS was to ‘reach the un-reached’ and referred to areas like Jharkhand and the North East which had very few CRS. ‘The more backward the area, the more the need for CRS – at present the situation was the other way round’, he said.

Referring to collective ownership of all concerned, he wanted CRS to make the best use of technology.

Mathur said that community radio in many countries played an important role in alerting the people about government policies, and about information beneficial for them and therefore it needed committed people.

Earlier, Sahu said there were 144 operational community radio stations, another 400 had been given licence of intent and 250 more were trying to enter. A total of 418 permissions had been issued. The government had initially launched the scheme for educational institutions in the government sector, but soon opened it up for non-governmental not-for-profit organizations.

At the meet attended by operators of CRS from all over the country in addition to some international delegates, around ten sessions are being held on various subjects highlighting the problems facing the CRS at present.

One of the aims is to provide opportunities to the station heads to interact with different government departments. These include the Ministries of Health, Women and Child Development, and Telecom, and also interact with organizations like the DAVP and Broadcast Engineering Consultants (India) Limited (BECIL). In addition, the participants are interacting with international agencies like UNESCO, UNICEF, Commonwealth of Learning, World Bank etc.