DD going all out for swearing-in ceremony

After a row over Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi’s interview with the public broadcaster, Doordarshan is not leaving any stone unturned for a seamless live coverage of his swearing-in ceremony by spicing it up with live commentary in regional languages like Kannada to Kashmiri and a webcast.

Senior officials of the Prasar Bharati, the controlling authority of Doordarshan, and Information and Broadcasting Ministry, are overseeing the preparations for the live coverage from the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan from Monday evening where over 4,000 VVIPs are expected to arrive.

All the Doordarshan channels will telecast the swearing-in ceremony live and 11 regional channels will have commentary in their respective languages. The regional language commentary will be available in regional languages like Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Odiya, Kashmiri, Punjabi and Bengali among others.

“We will start the coverage around 5:15 pm. Before, we start the telecast from Rashtrapati Bhavan at 5:30 pm, we will air a 10-minute profile of the new Prime Minister. Then we will go to the Rashtrapati Bhavan for the live coverage,” Mahesh Joshi, Additional Director General of Doordarshan (Delhi Kendra), told Deccan Herald.

For those with hearing problem, DD News will have commentary in sign language. Three sign language interpreters have been roped in for this purpose.

Doordarshan will also provide live feeds to private channels in India and foreign channels.
The channel will also have live streaming on YouTube as well as web casting in its website.

“Over 50 professionals and technicians are on the job for the live coverage. We are not taking this as a difficult task but we are considering it as an opportunity for us,” Joshi said.

He said the public broadcaster is “very cautious” as a lot of foreign dignitaries and other VVIPs are attending the function and they do not want a goof-up.

During the campaigning for Lok Sabha elections, Doordarshan had ran into controversy over editing out certain portions of an interview with Modi, which led to criticism from the Prime Minister-designate as well as his party. The BJP had alleged that the interview, which was aired in April, was edited on the order of the UPA government.

Doordarshan denied any interference from the government, saying certain portions were edited out due to time constraints. Modi had then tweeted that he felt “very sad” to see the national TV channel struggling to maintain its professional freedom.