NEW DELHI: Despite major shortage of staff, Prasar Bharati has informed the Information and Broadcasting Ministry that it is not feasible to regularise services of contractual employees in All India Radio and Doordarshan.

A Ministry source claimed that the pubcaster said recruitment has to be done according to the Recruitment Rules, and the contractuals of Prasar Bharati had not been engaged by following the Recruitment Rules concerned as most of them do not fulfill the prescribed educational and other qualifications.

In view of this, their regularisation would be in violation of the Supreme Court judgment in the case of State of Karnataka Vs. Uma Devi.

Furthermore, Prasar Bharati said that as some of the casuals/contractuals are booked for a maximum of 6 days in a month, their numbers in panels far exceed the number of posts for any particular job.

Prasar Bharati has informed that Doordarshan has engaged the following type of contractuals:

i.  Special Assignees -              18

ii. Contractual Engagees-         63

iii.Ex-BECIL Engagees-            166

iv. Retired Engagees -            211

Moreover, 306 contractuals are engaged in DD News Headquarters and 41 contractuals are working in the Regional News Units of Doordarshan Kendras.

Prasar Bharati has also informed that All India Radio (AIR) engaged 125 retired officials, on short term contract basis. Moreover, AIR Headquarters has engaged 116 Data Entry Operators and 38 casual workers through outsourcing agency.

Casual presenters/ announcers are being booked by AIR stations as talent on assignment basis. The number of such casual announcers varies from station to station as per their requirement. Since this is an ongoing process, there is no fixed number of casual presenters/ announcers.