India will counter Jhootistan

Intelligence agencies have been cautioning about round-the-clock “false propaganda” being beamed by Pakistan’s public and private television channels and its state-run radio station, targeting Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab, alleging human rights violations and “provoking” people “to rise against Indian occupying forces”. The Narendra Modi government has decided to revive a TV and radio transmission project at the Attari border in Punjab to counter Pakistan’s propaganda machinery.

The issue about how Pakistan was “bombarding” through its electronic media to create confusion among people living in Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran was raised by the Congress MP Partap Singh Bajwa in the Rajya Sabha this year.

Bajwa has now received a written reply from the Centre that the Doordarshan project to counter Pakistan would be executed this year. “The new transmission facility would be then received in Lahore, Gujranwala and Sialkot,” he says. He agreed with a suggestion that a popular programme Jhootistan, which used to be aired during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistan wars, was now required to nail the lies of Islamabad’s propaganda machinery.

The project had been jointly conceived over a decade ago by the All India Radio (AIR) and the Prasar Bharti Corporation of India (Doordarshan). In 2005, a 1,000-ft high, 20-KW AIR tower was set up as an “interim step” at Gharinda, five kilometres from the Attari-Wagah border, with an expected radius-range coverage area of about 60 kilometers.

Despite the plan, a 300 meter high self-supporting television tower could not be installed. Doordarshan had given the job to set up the TV tower worth Rs17 crore to a UK-based firm Alan Dick Broadcast in 2005. The contract was annulled since the firm had breached the contract terms. The UK firm had moved the Delhi High Court. The case is still pending.

The AIR infrastructure at the Attari border is already in place. Another border town Fazilka also has an AIR station. It operates with a 20KW FM transmitter on 100.8 megahertz and broadcasts the Urdu service.