Bengal govt to take over Tara Music and Tara News

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced that her government would take over Broadcast Worldwide Ltd—a media enterprise of the collapsed Saradha Group—to rescue its two television channels and save about 170 jobs.

A law will be promulgated to take control of the firm under the provisions of the Act on nationalization of private firms. The proposed law will need the assent of the President to be implemented, Banerjee said.

The move isn’t unique in itself—the West Bengal government has in the past made attempts to take control of dying media organizations, but has had little success in the long run.

Surjya Kanta Mishra of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and leader of the Opposition in the legislative assembly criticized Banerjee’s move saying taxpayers will have to pick up the tab for her largesse.

The takeover of Broadcast Worldwide also means that the state cannot liquidate the firm’s assets to repay depositors duped by the Saradha Group.

She has already announced a Rs.500-crore relief fund for the poorest Saradha Group depositors who have lost their money. She is immediately releasing Rs.26 lakh from her relief fund to pay the employees of the firm a one-time solatium of Rs.16,000 each because they have not received salaries for four months.

Weeping anchors on one of Broadcast Worldwide’s channels had in mid-April drawn Banerjee’s attention to the public deposit-taking Saradha Group, which by then had already started winding up its businesses.

Officials at the state’s information and cultural affairs department said Banerjee was moved by the sight of Tara Music’s anchors sobbing on live television on the first day of the Bengali calendar year.

She made arrangements to keep it and another channel—Tara News—afloat. Since then employees have been running these channels with donations from the Trinamool Congress leaders and artistes featured on Tara Music.

They had even moved the Calcutta high court, seeking its approval for this arrangement. The court appointed a three-member committee headed by a former judge to oversee the company’s operations as an interim measure.

Apart from these two channels, two Saradha Group newspapers, one in Bengali and the other in Urdu, targeted at the state’s Muslim population, are being run with the financial support of a Trinamool Congress leader.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/national-news/item/2516-bengal-govt-to-take-over-tara-music-and-tara-news.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/national-news/item/2516-bengal-govt-to-take-over-tara-music-and-tara-news.html