India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has granted approval to the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC) of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation as the level II self-regulatory organization or SRO as mandated under the amended Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2021.

BCCC, already a self regulatory body for member TV channels of IBF, an industry lobbying organization, got the latest approval as the cable TV rules were amended and notified by the federal government a couple of months back.

News Broadcasters Federation, another industry lobbying body primarily for TV news channels, recently announced that its SRO had obtained MIB recognition under both the cable TV rules and the February 2021-notified digital regulations.

The BCCC is presently headed as chairperson by Gita Mittal, former Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court as well as the Chief Justice of High Courts of the federally administered (Union Territories) areas of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

The other members of the BCCC include Uday Kumar Verma, former MIB Secretary; Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath, educationist, academician and former principal of the Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi; Pallavi Joshi, multilingual film and TV actress; Dipa Dixit, former member of the National Commission for

Protection of Child Rights; Priyank Kanoongo, Chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights; Sharmila Tagore, film actress and former film certification board chairperson and Tara Murali, managing trustee of Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group and executive committee member of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.

The broadcast industry representatives on the BCCC include Kshipra Jatana of AETN 18; Saravanan P of Sun TV Networks; Subha Ray Dar of Star and Disney India and Shyamala Venkatachalam of  Zee Entertainment.

A MIB statement said that the BCCC shall perform all the functions specified for a self-regulatory body in Rule 18 of the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2021.

The law mandates that any content-related complaints that an SRO is unable to resolve successfully or any of its rulings that’s challenged would be finally taken up by an oversight body that’s mostly populated with government nominees.

The amended cable TV rules state that any TV channel with landing rights in India would necessarily have to be part of an industry body (like the IBF or the NBF or the NBA) that also has an SRO attached to itself for taking up content related complaints.