NEW DELHI: Forced into withdrawing the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill for want of consultations with the Fourth Estate, the Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry on Monday began working with the media on what it calls the "19th draft" of the proposed legislation.

The first round of consultations with the media — four days after the Ministry put up the "19th draft" along with a consultation paper on its website — did not see a change in the stated position of the Fourth Estate.

The general view within the media was that there was not much of a difference between the draft on the table now and the Bill that had been sent by the Ministry to the Cabinet for clearance in June this year.

However, I&B Secretary S. K. Arora's stand during the course of deliberations and the press conference later was that the media was still working on a wrong premise.

"There have been 19 revisions to this Bill and different versions have been in circulation," he said while denying the charge that the Government was considering draconian provisions to rein in the media.

"The Government is not trying to ride roughshod over the media. That is why we decided to withdraw the Bill from the Cabinet and put up a draft for consultations," Mr. Arora said.

As for the alleged haste with which the Ministry took the Bill to the Cabinet in the first place without consulting stakeholders, he said: "We were driven by the commitment made by the Minister in Parliament that such a legislation would be introduced at the earliest."

Also, the Ministry needed to provide legislative sanction to several guidelines, which had been challenged in court, he said.

Some of the main areas of concerns for the media pertain to cross-media ownership restrictions, absence of autonomy for the proposed Broadcast Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI), and search and seizure provisions in the case of criminal offences.

Responding to these concerns, Mr. Arora told reporters that: "Today, we were essentially on a listening brief. We will articulate the Government's response to these concerns once we firm up a view on them."

As for apprehensions about cross-media ownership restrictions, he said some stakeholders also wanted some regulation.

On the autonomy of BRAI, he conceded that the general view was that credibility of the regulator would depend upon how much autonomy it enjoyed.

About the provision for search of premises and seizure of equipment, Mr. Arora said it was not as sweeping a clause as was being made out to be.

"We propose to make a clear-cut differentiation between civil and criminal offences. Unlicensed broadcasting or breach of national security will be treated as criminal offences and only in these instances will the authorised officers have the power to search premises and seize equipment," he said.

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