NEW DELHI: There has been no direct recruitment in the Group ?A? cadres since Prasar Bharati was set up as an autonomous corporation in 1997. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) refused to hold Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) meetings between 1997 and 2002 as the pubcaster was an autonomous body.

A large number of pending court cases compounded the problem, apart from the fact that service rules did not exist for many of the posts.

A total of 3452 posts, including operation and maintenance staff, have been identified as essential posts for filling up on priority basis and the Group of Ministers has approved a proposal for filling these posts in consultation with the Finance Ministry.

Also, even 40 years after the service was established, no permanent staffer has been recruited in the senior administrative grade of the Indian Broadcasting (Programme) Service set up specifically for All India Radio and Doordarshan.

Information and Broadcasting Ministry sources admitted to indiantelevision.com that of the sanctioned strength of 642 in the IB(P)S, only 500 had been filled apart from 94 officers taken on ad-hoc basis in the junior time cale.

The sanctioned strengthened in the other posts is: 97 in the Junior Administrative Grade of which four have been filled, and 265 in the Senior Time Scale of which 231 are vacant.

The IB(P)S had been conceived by then Information and Broadcasting Minister V N Gadgil especially to have trained manpower in AIR and DD and reduce dependence on the Indian Information Service which continues to dominate the manpower in Prasar Bharati.

The situation is even worse in the News Services Division of AIR, which has a total regular manpower of 26 against a sanctioned strength of 104.

Among Group ?A? services in All India Radio, there has been no recruitment in the post of Announcer Grade I which has a sanction of 20 posts, none in Music composer Grade I which has a sanction for two posts, none of news reader-cum-translator Grade I which has a sanction for 20 posts, none for Deputy Director (Audience Research) against the sanction of six posts, none for Translator-cum-announcer in Indian Languages or Foreign Language in Grade I which have sanction for one and seven posts respectively.

There are 32 vacancies against 72 sanctioned posts for instrumentalist Grade I, one Director and one Joint Director (Audience Research) against two posts in each category, 42 Audience Research Officers against 54 sanctioned posts, and one Supervisor against 15 sanctioned posts.

In addition to the normal functioning of Prasar Bharati, there is a total requirement of 8018 personnel for the newly sanctioned projects in the pubcaster. The total number of persons required for Operation and Maintenance of the new posts is 2183 for AIR and 5,835 for DD.