DTH GUIDELINES TO BE APPLIED STRICTLY
LOK SABHA
Licence for DTH will
be issued only when the Applicant company including Space TV has
fully complied with the eligibility criteria with respect to foreign
equity holding, as laid down in the DTH Guidelines of March 2001,
as also other terms and conditions necessary for such grant.
Replying to a question
by Shri V. Vetriselvan in Lok Sabha today, the Minister of Information
& Broadcasting, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad told that the Ministry
of Finance has clarified through its letter of 17.1.2003, that
the present equity of Space TV contributed by two employees of
Star TV cannot be treated as domestic share-holding as the funding
for this equity contribution has been raised through bank finance
in India, against the security deposit of Rs. 10 crore made by
Star TV. However, they have also stated that DTH guidelines do
not make a distinction between stages of ‘Letter of Intent’ or
issue of a licence or post licence operations, for applying eligibility
criteria on the limit of foreign equity holding. They opined that
it is for the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting to interpret
their own guidelines.
The Ministry of Home
Affairs has stated that there is nothing adverse against firm
or its directors and the CEO and as such Ministry of Home has
no objection to the proposal from security point of view. Ministry
of Home has further stated that M/s Space TV Pvt. Ltd. was incorporated
on January 09, 2001. S/Shri G. Jagdish Kumar and Ajay K. Sharma
are the promoters and G. Subramanian is the CEO of the firm. All
the three are presently working with Star India Pvt. Ltd. in different
capacities. The Head Office and regional office addresses of M/s
Space TV belong to Star India Pvt. Ltd.
In view of the above,
Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has asked M/s Space
TV to pay non-refundable entry fee of Rs. 10 crore to enable this
Ministry to issue Letter of Intent subject to its furnishing an
affidavit that it has fulfilled the following conditions.
