NEW DELHI: All India Radio has pursued the Indira Gandhi National Open University for early deposition of outstanding dues so that the Gyan Vani educational channel can be resumed.

Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Rajyavardhan Rathore gave this assurance to the Parliament.

All India Radio had informed the Government that on 1 August 2001, IGNOU signed infrastructure sharing and consultancy agreement with AIR) for 37 stations of IGNOU’s Gyanvani FM Radio channels. Under this agreement, IGNOU has to pay license fee to AIR.

IGNOU has discontinued the payment of license fee with effect from 1 April 2013 resulting in accumulation of outstanding dues of the tune of Rs. 21, 64, 12,770 as on 30 September 2014.

Repeated reminders were sent by AIR for remittance of the outstanding dues and Joint Coordination Committee meeting held at the Electronic Media Production Centre, IGNOU on 29 October 2013.

The notice for discontinuation was issued to IGNOU on 12 September 2014 and thereafter the operation of Gyanvani FM channels was discontinued with effect from 1 October 2014.

Sources had previously stated to Radioandmusic, "IGNOU has to pay around Rs 20-25 crore to AIR as Gyanvani is transmitted using AIR transmitters. The issue can be sorted once the dues are cleared by the Government. The source also state that the vice chancellor "Professor M. Aslam and his biased committee does not want to spend IGNOU resources on the services."