The government has finally put to rest the speculations and angst surrounding the daily 30 minutes public service messaging on TV channels, which was earlier said to be mandatory, by saying it would be ‘voluntary’.

The directive on public service messaging on private sector TV channels, barring few genres like sports, is part of the newly-announced amended uplink and downlink guidelines, which aims to simplify cumbersome processes.

“Voluntary compliance and self-certification are the guiding principles for implementation of this provision under the guideline,” Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur informed Lok Sabha (Lower House of parliament) on Tuesday.

He, however, added that the objective of this provision was to spread awareness on the themes of national importance and of social relevance in public interest and had been put in place after due diligence following an earlier recommendation of sector regulator TRAI on the issue.

TV channels had pushed back against this provision of the UL/DL guidelines, saying 30 minutes of public messaging daily would upset the 24-hour programming schedule and, more importantly, would burden the broadcasters with additional costs that could total up to in the region of Rs. 1 billion a month.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has been holding meetings on the issue with stakeholders and the last one, reportedly, was held on December 9.

On Tuesday, Thakur was replying to a query posed by fellow parliamentarians whether all TV channels will have to broadcast content on issues of national importance and social relevance for at least 30 minutes every day on a mandatory basis as per the UL/DL guidelines 2022 and whether those channels not following the directive could lose their licence.

Thakur did admit that the Policy Guidelines for Uplinking and Downlinking of Satellite Television Channels in India, 2022 provides that a company/LLP having permission to operate in India may undertake public service broadcasting for a minimum period of 30 minutes a day on themes of national importance and of social relevance.

The list of themes are identified by the government and could be reviewed periodically, the Minister added.

To another part of the same question — whether the government will subsidise the cost of producing and airing such content for the broadcasters — Thakur said that “no such provision has been made under the guidelines”.

At present, sports channels and foreign news channels downlinking into India are exempt from this provision of the uplink and downlink guidelines 2022.