Hyderabad, Aug 04: Cracking a whip on cable operators, who ignore the mandatory beaming of Doordarshan channel, Prasar Bharati plans to draft an action plan to penalise the faulty operators 'then and there'. "We will commission all our officers from the rank of programme executives to station directors and confer magisterial powers on them to prosecute the faulty cable operators then and there", Prasar Bharati CEO, K S Sarma told the reporters in an informal chat here today.
All officers working in various Doordarshan kendras and radio stations will soon be empowered to prosecute cable operators refusing to beam Doordarshan programmes, he said.
Without specifying the exact date, Sarma said, "It will come into force very soon and this is the only way to deal with the adamant cable operators".
"We will make use of our wide network of human resource and infrastructure to check the erring operators", he said.
When pointed out the scope of improvement in the quality of Doordarshan programmes, Sarma said, "We are trying to infuse more professionalism into our functioning".

"Very soon we will make some qualitative changes at the top level to bring in better programmes", he added.
Refusing to comment on conditional access system (CAS), he said, CAS is a government decision and Prasar Bharati being an autonomous body has 'nothing to do with it'.
Bureau Report