The income of India’s pubcaster Prasar Bharati has increased over the last two years versus expenditures, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur has said.

“No sir. Excess of Income over Expenditure of Prasar Bharati, as per their Book of Accounts, has increased from Rs.182.96 Cr in 2018-19 to Rs.323.26 Cr in 2020-21,” Thakur said in Rajya Sabha (Upper House of parliament).

The Minister was replying to a question from a fellow parliamentarian on March 31 on whether the net profit of the Prasar Bharati has declined during the last three years.

Prasar Bharati is the parent of India’s national broadcasters Doordarshan and All India Radio.

To another query whether the government had plans to “broadcast some famous OTT shows on Doordarshan to increase its viewership”, Thakur said DD had set policies for acquiring programmes from outside vendors, without directly dwelling on any programmes that had been on a streaming platform.

“Prasar Bharati Board has approved guidelines /policies to acquire quality content for various DD channels, under DAP(Direct Assignment Process), Licensed Ready-Made Audio-Visual content and procurement of feature films for Prasar Bharati platforms on Fixed Licence Fee, “ Thakur explained.

He added: “The fixed point charts of various Doordarshan channels are reviewed by Prasar Bharati from time to time to meet out the needs and aspirations of (the) target audience.”

Meanwhile, Thakur in February had also informed parliament there had been no decline in viewership of the country’s national broadcaster Doordarshan even though the market had fragmented and private sector TV channels’ numbers had increased.

He had said that the network has been cornering advertising revenue, including those from non-government sources.

“There is no decline in viewership in the recent years in spite of increase of Private TV Channels in the broadcasting space during past years and fragmentation of audience due to many private TV channels relaying Doordarshan’s live content,” Thakur had told Rajya Sabha earlier in the year.

DD’s parent Prasar Bharati, an autonomous body, is funded by the public as it receives annual financial aid from the government.

According to a PTI report, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in February 2022 had announced a Rs 3,980.77 crore outlay for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) in the 2022-23 fiscal — a decrease of Rs 90 crore from last year.

The allocation to the autonomous national broadcaster body Prasar Bharati had been also reduced to Rs 2,555.29 crore from Rs 2,640.11 crore allotted to it in the last fiscal.

The commercial revenue earned by Doordarshan, as mentioned earlier in parliamentary questions, during the last three years is as under:

Financial Year	Revenue (in Rs. Crore)
	From Government Advertisement	From non- Government Advertisement	Total
2018-2019	496.41	127.43	623.84
2019-2020	233.08	115.75	348.83
2020-2021	132.97	139.64	272.61