'Facilitate broadcast of Bangladeshi private TV channels in India'

Bangladesh has urged India to remove the barriers on broadcasting Bangladeshi private television channels in India's West Bengal state and other parts of the country.

Information Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud made the call during a meeting with his visiting Indian counterpart Prakash Javadekar at Bangladesh Secretariat in Dhaka on Tuesday, reports BSS.

In a joint media briefing after the meeting, Hasan Mahmud said the issue of broadcasting the Bangladeshi private television channels featured their talks when he pointed out that West Bengal’s cable operators demand 'high fees' that indirectly bars the Bangladeshi TV channels.

“He (Javadekar) said he would deeply look into the issue,” Hasan said, accompanied as well by Bangladesh’s State Minister for Information Dr Murad Hasan

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.