MUMBAI: The Indian government has rejected more than half the number of licence applications it has approved  in 2024. This was revealed by the information & broadcasting minister of state L. Murugan in the Rajya Sabha on 20 December 2024.  This was in response to a question posed in the upper house of parliament. 

According to him,the  I&B ministry rejected 13 applications for channel licences in 2024, the highest number in the past five years. It has approved 22 applications for licences and renewed 34 of them in 2024. 

The number of channel licence applications approved in 2024 was twice the number that were given the green light in 2023. .

2024 is also the year when the MIB cancelled the least number of TV channels in the past five years. The figure for 2024 is only one, while in 2021 it cancelled 24 TV licences.

Since, 2020 the government has rejected 34 applications for channel licences, of which 13 are accounted for by the rejections in 2024. 110 new channel licence applications have been approved since 2020, while 269 channel licence renewal applications were approved.  

The list of channel licence applications approved, renewed, rejected and cancelled. as given by L. Murugan in the Rajya Sabha is in the table below::