I&B ministry flags salary ‘anomalies’ at Prasar Bharati

Reiterating its stand on maintaining transparency in financial matters relating to Prasar Bharati, the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ministry is now looking at specifics of the appointments and pay packets of senior officers in the public broadcaster, and flagging cases where it thinks there was an anomaly.
On February 26, it shot off a notice to a senior official in Prasar Bharati, Rajeev Singh, who is member (finance), regarding the fixation of his pay, and that of former member (personnel), Suresh Chandra Panda. The notice stresses: “How the pay fixation needs to be revisited as per provisions of CCS (Central Secretariat Service).” The ministry has said that being the “administrative ministry, it was competent to fix the pay for retired officers, and therefore, Prasar Bharati is not authorised to make these decisions.”

“As per his reappointment, Singh had joined at the level of additional secretary but he gets the salary of secretary. We are looking into as it is a matter of financial prudence for us,” a senior official in the ministry told ET. Singh is in charge of managing all finances at Prasar Bharati. The salary difference between an additional secretary and a secretary is around `20,000 a month, with implications of pensions and perquisites.

Singh, who has been serving Prasar Bharati as member (finance) since April 2015, was previously with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd for over nine years.

In January last year, he replaced Panda, who was serving as interim chief executive since November 2016.


Apart from a CEO, chairman, members who handle personnel and finance matters, Prasar Bharati also has seven officers at the rank of additional director general. The ministry is also looking at how these appointments were made.

In an email response Singh said the details were asked from the CEO. He did not furnish any further details.

Recently, Singh was also asked by Prasar Bharati officials to look at commercial units of both Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR), which includes sale of advertisement slots and sharing of resources, such as transmitters with private players. Ministry officials said they are also looking at attempts by some in the public broadcaster to make the Prasar Bharati secretariat more powerful than the operational and creative units of DD and AIR.

In the 2018 Union Budget, the I&B ministry received an outlay of Rs 4,089 crore, of which Prasar Bharati, which runs DD and AIR, was to receive more than half. Prasar Bharati depends on government funds for its projects.