Mumbai: I&B ministry has issued the latest update on the status of permitted private satellite channels in the country after issuing the license for three more . As per the latest update as on 15th September 2014, there are 400 news and current affairs channels and 413 non-news and current affairs channels.
TV channels that can uplink from and downlink to India stands at 685 (earlier 682) which includes 378 news (earlier 376) and 307 (earlier 306) non-news channels.
Meanwhile, as far as the channel that can only uplink and only downlink, the number remained constant at 35 and 93, respectively. The new channels include Kalinga TV, Epic TV. The latter, started by former Disney MD Mahesh Samat, has been waiting for more than a year to get a licence approval from MIB.
At a recent function, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar had said that the ministry is working towards clearing licences of all the pending channels that had been deliberately kept pending by the earlier government. Near about 14 channels were to be listed.
The ministry has also simplified the process of security clearance for broadcasters.
