MUMBAI: A week after notices were sent by the ministry of information and broadcasting (MIB) to three DTH operators for not carrying the mandatory 24 Doordarshan channels, one of the three  has decided that it will be adding the remaining six channels to its packages within the next 72 hours.

“Even before the notice was issued, we had initiated a technical upgrade that will facilitate to add more channels on the same transponder. We took steps nearly three months ago to import equipments and to upgrade our software,” says Sun Direct CEO Mahesh Kumar.

As far as the reply to the MIB notice is concerned Kumar says that he will be writing to the ministry post the addition stating that it is complying with the rules. He also mentioned that currently Sun Direct is carrying 18 DD channels and within the next three days, all 24 will be carried by it.

Last week Tata Sky had decided to respond to the MIB's notice expressing his company's inability to carry any more DD channels as it lacked the bandwidth on its existing transponders, and stating that new capacity it had signed up for on GSAT-10 has not been delivered to it despite several pleas to all the departments in  ISRO, the MIB, department of space, WPC, and what have you.  This leaves only Reliance Digital to decide a course of action regarding the notice given to it.

According to the MIB directive all DTH operators have to provide 24 DD channels irrespective of whether they provide them a-la-carte or in packages to their subscribers.

The channels which cable operators must show are DD National, DD News, DD Bharati, DD Urdu, DD Sports, DD India, DD Kashir, DD Punjabi, DD Girnar, DD Sahyadri, DD Saptagiri, DD Malayalam, DD Podhigai, DD Chandana, DD Bangla, DD North East, DD Bihar, DD Uttar Pradesh, DD Rajasthan, DD Madhya Pradesh, DD Oriya, Gyan Darshan, Lok Sabha TV and Rajya Sabha TV.