While experts have been ignored, those from unrelated sectors have taken charge at senior posts.
New Delhi: Content creators at Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR) have threatened to go on strike ahead of Independence Day to protest against the fact that some of them have not been promoted for as long as 34 years.
They are also demanding an end to lateral entry from what they say are unrelated areas for posts that have been left vacant.
These positions are reserved for the Indian Broadcasting Programme Service (IBPS), a specialised cadre set up in 1990 to create content for Prasar Bharati. Lateral entry is in violation of rules since the IBPS is a professional service.
Any strike ahead of Independence Day will jeopardise schedules for the public broadcaster on one of its most important days of programming.
The threat follows a fresh order for on-deputation appointments to key programme posts in Prasar Bharati.
Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati did not respond to messages or emails sent by ThePrint. The information and broadcasting ministry, the cadre-controlling ministry of the IBPS, too did not reply to questions sent by ThePrint.
But in an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court in 2016, the broadcaster had made its stand clear, saying they hired professionals from other fields because of a shortage of specialised programme staffers.
Trouble in Prasar Bharati
The fresh order has brought forth the chaos in the ranks of Prasar Bharati blamed on years of neglect by successive governments, and comes amid reports that the Centre is planning to disband the body over its purported inefficiency as India’s public service broadcaster.
According to officials, there are around 1,048 sanctioned ‘specialised programme’ posts for IBPS personnel in DD and AIR. Several of these have reportedly been assigned to officials on deputation from sectors as varied as telecom, the Indian Air Force, central secretariat, income tax, railways, and defence production and engineering services, among others.
This, even as there are barely any IBPS officers at the level of deputy director, director and deputy director general. Just two of 30 additional director general posts in the two organisations are held by IBPS officers, while the rest are either vacant or occupied by personnel on deputation.
Also read: Successive govts crippled Prasar Bharati, now Modi govt wants to kill it, say officials
A similar predicament faces programme executives at the lower end of the hierarchy.
Also recruited through the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), programme executives are eligible for promotion to the senior administrative grade (SAG) — the most senior IBPS position, equivalent to the rank of joint secretary in the government of India — after 20 years in service, but many have not been promoted even after 35 years.
Fifty per cent of IBPS personnel are direct recruits to the first rung of the service. Twenty per cent are supposed to be direct recruits to the SAG level through the UPSC, while the remaining are programme executives promoted to the SAG.
According to rules for the IBPS, programme executives or even IBPS officers are mandated to have qualifications in art, culture, education, media, publicity or production of programmes.
Staff ‘demoralised’
A senior DD producer working without a promotion for nearly 27 years asked why this trend of lateral recruitment of people without any field experience or qualification should not be compared to the teachers’ recruitment scam that landed former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala in jail.
The scam pertained to the recruitment of over 3,000 teachers with the use of forged documents.
“The government of India is considering lateral entry (at the joint secretary level) for people from the private sector with 15 years of experience, as they feel 15 years of experience makes a person a domain expert,” he said.
“But here we have programme specialists denied promotions for over 33 years, despite vacancies. Instead of promoting them, why are those posts being increasingly filled up with people with no programming background?”
Another programme executive, not promoted since he joined the service in 1983, said: “Which other government department has denied promotion to its staff for decades? What will be the motivation for employees to work in such a situation?”
The situation, the official said, had demoralised them and become a cause of social stigma.
The storm’s been brewing
The protest has been in the works for years. In 2016, a former AIR station director, P. Raja Rao, had filed a writ of quo warranto in the Delhi High Court against appointments on deputation to IBPS programme service posts, arguing that they undermined the UPSC.
Prasar Bharati’s submission in the high court, cited earlier in the copy, was made in response to this.
According to Rao, the absence of a review by the departmental promotion committee for over 25 years had created a situation where several IBPS posts were vacant even as a large number of eligible candidates “languish for years without promotion”.
Talking to ThePrint, Rao said broadcasting was a specialised discipline and needed subject expertise.
“The IBPS programme cadre has expertise in various broadcasting domains including music production, drama production, features, documentaries, development communication among others,” he said, adding that none of those brought into the programme service positions on deputation had such expertise.
“This makes it clear that the appointments are mala fide and based on personal and political links and… not suited to the professional needs of a public service broadcaster that is the only source of information for a vast section of population,” he added.
He said he had an RTI reply – a copy of which is with ThePrint – that showed the on-deputation appointments had been made without a proper selection process and the UPSC’s involvement.
Rao also sought to point out that the recruitment board mandated by the Prasar Bharati Act was not in place.
Earlier, the director general of AIR, Fayyaz Shehreyar, wrote to the Prasar Bharati CEO about his displeasure with the appointment of non-field experts and urged a solution.
Also read: Modi govt may turn DD and AIR into public sector firms, disband Prasar Bharati