NEW DELHI: As part of its attempt to cover the border areas and also prevent signals coming into India from across the border, All India Radio is setting up a 10 KW FM Radio Station at Malhar village in Udhampur district of Jammu.

The foundation stone for this was laid over the weekend by Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s office Jitendra Singh in the presence of local MLA Pawan Gupta. AIR DDG (Projects) Aditya Chaturvedi was also present

Dr Singh expressed his delight that the long-pending aspirations of the people living in Udhampur district had finally come true. He said this would also reach out to entertain the defence employees working in far flung areas of the district and to promote the talent. It would go a long way in providing an opportunity to the youth of the district to prosper their talent and promote the folk culture of the district, he added.

AIR DG Fayyaz Sheheryar said the project will be completed at the cost of Rs.92.4 million excluding the cost of the land and will take about 18 months before formal commissioning. The land has been donated by Kaka Ram who was felicitated on the occasion by the dignitaries.

Earlier in August last year, Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu told Parliament that projects to set up five new High Power TV transmitters in Jammu and Kashmir were at various stages of implementation and are targeted for completion during 2017-18.

He said Doordarshan at present has 243 TV transmitters of varying power functioning in border districts of the country.

Strengthening of the terrestrial coverage of AIR and Doordarshan to counter foreign broadcast signal along border areas is a priority of Government and is an ongoing process, he said.

Special packages for expansion and improvement of Doordarshan and AIR services in the border areas have been formulated from time to time, the Mnister said.

All the areas uncovered by terrestrial transmission (including those in border areas) alongwith rest of the country, have been provided with multi-channel TV coverage through Doordarshan’s free to air DTH service DD Freedish.

DTH signals can be received anywhere in the country including border areas with the help of small sized dish receive units.

Freedish has now installed Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS) to keep track of the number of subscribers, and is also moving from MPEG 2 to MPEG 4 to enable it to increase the number of channels that can be carried by Freedish.