New Delhi: A total of 39 studio centres in the country have been taken up for full digitization as part of the ongoing scheme of digitization of Doordarshan’s Network, Parliament has been informed.

State of the art digital equipment would therefore be made available at the studio centres in the north east states on a par with other similar studio centres in the country.

Of these 39, eleven are in the north east states: three in Assam, two in Meghalaya, and one each in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. The others are: five in Uttar Pradesh; two each in Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and West Bengal; and one each in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh and Puducherry.

Five Digital Satellite News Gathering Units (DSNG) have also been provided at Guwahati to cater to the coverage requirements of north east states. DSNG Units are deployed at different places in north east states as per coverage requirements. As part of the ongoing schemes, four additional DSNG Units for North East States are envisaged to be procured.

Meanwhile, Prasar Bharati sources said upgradation/modernization which includes induction of new technologies, replacement of old aging equipment and augmentation/upgradation facilities of all Doordarshan Kendras including those located in north-east region is a continuous process and schemes in this regard are formulated and implemented from time to time.

The sources said that for the north east region there is a dedicated 24x7 North East Channel, besides Kendras in North East like DDK Guwahati, DDK Aizwal, DDK Gangtok, DDK Tura, DDK Shillong , DDK Silchar, DDK Dibrugarh, DDK Itanagar, DDK Agartala, DDK Kohima and DDK Imphal which telecast programmes in their respective regional languages.