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Govt to evolve consensus on FII investment in print media

After having categorically rejected entry of foreign print media, the government is now trying to evolve a consensus on the issue of investment by FIIs and NRIs in the Indian publishing industry, Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj told reporters.

She was awaiting responses of the standing committee on communications and the law ministry to which the matter has been referred.

Swaraj said she also had a meeting with the five editors, who had written to her suggesting that allowing investment by institutional investors, non-resident Indians and overseas corporate bodies in the print media would not go against the 1955 Cabinet resolution which had barred foreign ownership and editorial control.

The minister asked the editors -- Narendra Mohan, Aroon Purie, Chandan Mitra, Shekhar Gupta and T N Ninan -- to try to build a consensus in the industry as well.

"On the issue of allowing foreign print media into the country, there was neither consensus among the newspaper owners nor political parties," Swaraj recalled.

The minister said she had met the standing committee chairman Somnath Chatterjee and discussed the matter. The committee is likely to deliberate on the issue when it meets here next week.

In the letter, the editors had suggested that such investments would have an entirely beneficial effect of strengthening the Indian media and should be considered separately from the foreign print media question so that "unrelated issues are not brought in the policy debate on this limited issue."

They also emphasised that their request was made with the objective of strengthening the Indian media and not for allowing foreign print media in the country.

"Investment by these categories of investors is already allowed in several other kinds of media, more so in the most powerful media of today - DTH, television and Internet.

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