AIR Dharwad to continue with Pradesh Samachar

Dharwad: The move by the Union ministry of information and broadcasting to close the regional news unit (RNU) at Dharwad station of All India Radio and broadcast the morning regional news bulletin Pradesh Samachar in Kannada has been stalled, thanks to an intervention by Dharwad MP and Union minister Pralhad Joshi.
The move had met with resistance from various organisations and the Karnatak Vidyavardhaka Sangha (KVV Sangha) had threatened to launch an agitation if the government went ahead with its plan to shift the unit to Bengaluru. Joshi spoke to the minister and officials and the move has been stalled at least for now.
AIR broadcasts three Kannada news bulletins everyday. While the morning bulletin is aired from Dharwad, the afternoon and evening bulletins are broadcast from Bengaluru.
Started on November 1, 42 years ago, Pradesh Samachar — 10-minute Kannada news bulletin — was prepared and presented by the RNU at Dharwad station and broadcast from 7.05 am to 7.15 am. It was popular as it covered news not only of North Karnataka but of the state. According to a survey, it had a listenership of 5.5 crore.
People in the region are happy that the RNU will continue to be in Dharwad. However, they want programmes like FM news bulletin broadcast five times a day and ‘Samachar Darshan’ - the 10-minute programme broadcast from 6.30 pm on every Saturday and the five-minute ‘Varta Patra’ aired at 6.25pm every Monday which have been stopped to be started again.
“The RNU which had a news editor, full time correspondent (from Indian Information Service), two full time news readers and a team of casual news readers, has now been reduced to a skeleton as it is running on casual readers and correspondents. There is an urgent need to ensure the vacancies are filled,” said KVV Sangha vice- president Basavaprabhu Hosakeri.
“The assistant station director of AIR, Dharwad TP Nanjundaswamy, is stationed at Bengaluru and as a result the programme executive doubles as the coordinator of RNU. The officers in Bengaluru are reluctant to come to Dharwad and work here and whenever transferred, they manage to get it cancelled and try to get the RNU shifted to the Bengaluru RNU,” said another retired officer.