New Delhi, 13 December: The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) will form a new company to ensure compliance with the rules in India. The name of this company will be Collective News Room (CNR), which will be effective from April 2024.
Four BBC employees will form ‘Collective Newsroom’, a wholly Indian-owned company, under which the BBC’s six Indian language services will be operated.
The BBC is reorganizing its India operations to comply with regulations governing foreign investment in India. The name of this company will be Collective News Room (CNR), which will be effective from April 2024. Four BBC employees will form CNR, under which six Indian language services will be operated. However, English language related work in India will remain with the BBC.
The BBC has taken this decision following an investigation this year, in which tax officials investigated the BBC’s offices in Delhi and Mumbai.
The BBC on Tuesday said four of its employees in India have left the organization to set up an Indian company wholly owned by Indians to produce content for the platform in compliance with the country’s foreign direct investment (FDI) law.
The new company will create content in Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi. CNPL will create all content for Indian digital platforms and Indian YouTube channels in English.
In fact, in September 2019, the government had reduced the FDI permission in digital news publications from 100 percent to 26 percent. Subsequently, in November 2020, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, through a public notice, had given one month’s time to all digital news publishers to submit details of their shareholding pattern.
The government had given time till October 15, 2021, to entities with more than 26 per cent FDI to reduce such investments and seek MIB approval, but it is not clear how many companies have sought MIB approval as per the November 2020 public notice.
At present, more than 99 percent of the India unit of BBC World Service is owned by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
