DHAKA, Nov 05, 2019 (BSS) – Information Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud today
urged his visiting Indian counterpart Prakash Javadekar to remove barriers of
broadcasting Bangladeshi private TV channels in West Bengal state and other
parts of India where cable operators visibly created obstacles for their
airing.
In a joint media briefing after a meeting with Javadekar, he said the
issue of broadcasting the Bangladeshi channels featured their talks when he
pointed out that West Bengal’s cable operators were demanding “high fees”
virtually barring the Bangladeshi TV channels there.
“He (Javadekar) said he would deeply look into the issue,” Hasan said,
joined as well by Bangladesh’s State Minister for Information Dr Murad Hasan
at Bangladesh Secretariat.
Hasan added that Indians now could watch BTV programmes “but the viewers
particularly of West Bengal could not watch the Bangladeshi private channels
though there is no barrier of the part of Indian Government”.
India’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Javadekar is also in charge
of the country’s Environment, Forest and Climate Change while now he is on a
visit to Dhaka to join an environment conference in Bangladesh capital.
“We had a very good discussion on many topics – cultural and political
particularly on film industry and television,” the Indian minister said.
Javadekar added that India by now started broadcasting state-run Bangladesh
Television (BTV) throughout India with free dish while Bangladesh also
started airing the India’s state-owned Doordarshan (DD) TV.
“We also discussed about two films based on Bangladesh’s Liberation
War and on Bangabandhu . . . I invited him (Hasan) to India and he will
come very soon and more progress will be done,” he said.
Javadekar said he particularly invited Hasan to India’s Pune to visit the
some very good film institutes’ and archives.
“We sought cooperation to make the Bangabandhu Film City more dynamic and
he (Javadekar) assured us to give all out cooperation to this end,” Hasan
said.
He said the meeting also discussed about the progress of two films under
the joint initiatives of the two governments.
Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Riva Ganguly Das and Bangladesh’s
Information Secretary Abdul Malek were present in the meeting.