New Delhi: Doordarshan’s 24-hour channel devoted to farmers and rural India, Kisan TV will be launched on 26th May, 2015.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be formally launching Kisan TV in the presence of the Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley at a formal function in Vigyan Bhavan.
Doordarshan has put on Kisan TV on trial run in the past couple of weeks and commenced the test run today (25th May) which will make it available to all distribution platforms was commenced.
I & B Minister Arun Jaitley had earlier said that the delay had been caused as the PM was in travel.
A budget of Rs 100 crore had been set aside in July last year. However, this year’s budget had cut down Kisan TV’s corpus to Rs 90 crore for 2015-16.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, which also examines issues linked to the I&B Ministry had said in a recent report that emphasis should be laid on local dialect on regional basis so that farmers all across the country are able to access the channel in their local language/dialect, thereby getting benefited by this laudable initiative of the Government.
The Parliamentary Committee in a subsequent report also said that the Ministry should spend Rs 35 crore, earmarked in this year’s budget for content, judiciously.
The FTA channel will be available on major all Cable Networks & direct to home (DTH) platforms including Tata Sky, Videocon d2h, Dish TV & DD Freedish.
