Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has assumed additional duties as Minister of Information and Broadcasting in the third term of the Modi government, while retaining his existing portfolios of Railways and Minister of Electronics and Information Technology.
Anurag Thakur, the BJP MP from Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh, was the I&B minister in the Modi cabinet in the previous term.
In a related development, L Murugan took charge as Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting.
Some of the key policy decisions in the works at the Information & Broadcasting Ministry include finalisation of the National Broadcasting Policy, Hindu BusinessLine reports.
One of the burning issues in front of the sector is the requirement of mandatory self-declaration certificates advertisers need to give for broadcasting or publishing ads from June 18. Advertisers will need to certify that their ads do not contain misleading claims and adhere to regulatory guidelines.
This is in line with a directive of the Supreme Court. The Ministry has said that advertisers will need to submit these certificates on the Broadcast Seva Portal for TV and radio ads and on Press Council of India’s portal for print and digital ads. The industry has raised concerns about the practicality of this self-declaration given challenges associated with different mediums, the business daily further reports.
For the record, bureaucrat-turned-politician Vaishnaw first took charge as Railway Minister on July 7, 2021 and has continued it in the new cabinet formed on June 9, 2024.
A former IAS officer of the 1994-batch, Vaishnaw has handled important responsibilities for over 15 years and was particularly known for his contribution to the public-private partnership (PPP) framework in infrastructure.
