NEW DELHI: With the government zooming in on development and progress of the North-East region, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry is planning to increase the number of Doordarshan channels in the region.
Ministry officials said at present there is only one 24X7 channel for the region and a proposal for its trifurcation is under consideration.
As per the proposal, there can be three 24X7 Doordarshan channels for the North-East: DD Arunprabha for Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim; one for Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland; and a third channel for Assam and Meghalaya.
The officials said that since a single channel cannot meet the requirements of the rich and diverse cultures of the North-East, the need to increase the number of channels for this region has been long felt.
"It, however, is not an easy exercise since the diversity in the North-East is amazing. A single state like Manipur has several languages which are spoken there. It is felt that there should be a single channel for every state.
"But launching a new channel also bring with it questions related to availability of manpower, viability, content," a senior official said.
According a report tabled in Parliament recently, the Standing Committee on Information Technology was informed by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry about the proposal to trifurcate the existing North East channel.
The Ministry also informed the Committee that starting three channels will also be a software intensive exercise as content will be required to be customised as per requirement of a particular state.
Asking the I&B Ministry to implement the proposal expeditiously, the parliamentary panel in its report urged the government to accord top priority to these projects and fix time-frame for their operationalisation.