NEW DELHI:  In a pace that has surprised many, Doordarshan is set to hold the 19th e-auction for Freedish on 12 December in an attempt to touch the target of 112 television channels in the next few months.

Doordarshan has set a reserve price of Rs 3.7 crore per slot for the 19th online e-auction, though indiantelevision.com learnt that the bid amount went up to Rs 4.2 crore in the 17th e-auction held on 12 November. This came shortly after the 16th e-auction on 28 October.

 DD sources also said the 19th auction is to fill four slots. Earlier, Prasar Bharati officials had decided not to disclose the number of slots to be e-auctioned to prevent bidders forming consortia to bid or resort to other malpractices.

 Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar had said recently that the future of Doordarshan was in Freedish and digitisation. He had added that this may mean that some channels would have to be attracted to Freedish by means other than e-auction.

 DD Sources also said that while Freedish may be encrypted to keep a tab on the number of subscribers, it would remain free-to-air.

The e-auction will be conducted by Synise Technologies, Pune on behalf of Prasar Bharati.   

 The reserve price in the 15th e-auction was Rs three crore and was raised to Rs 3.7 crore in the 16th auction.

 Prior to the 16th auction, the total number of channels on Freedish was 58.

 Meanwhile, a Doordarshan official declined to give the number of successful bids in recent auctions as engineers of the pubcaster had to test these channels before verifying any numbers.

 The eligibility terms and conditions including other relevant details for this e-auction are displayed on DD website: www.ddindia.gov.in.

 However, the participation amount (EMD) in the e-auction is Rs 1.5 crore which will be deposited in advance on or before 11 November evening along with processing fee of Rs 10,000 (Non-refundable) in favour of PB (BCI) Doordarshan Commercial Service, New Delhi.

 Applicants have also been asked mandatorily to deposit a Demand Draft of Rs 5,500 registration amount favouring  Synise Technologies, payable at Pune at the time of submission of the application.

The time for every slot e-auction will be of 15 minutes duration.

 The applicants must provide details of the uplink/downlink permission documents received from the concerned Ministries with the applications to ensure they are not rejected.

 The demand drafts of unsuccessful bidders will be returned immediately or within a week after the e-auction process is completed.