NEW DELHI: After numerous delays, Doordarshan’s Kisan TV will finally see the light of day on 26 May, 2015.

The channel, which was earlier slated for formal launch on Baisakhi Day last month as a 24-hour channel devoted to farmers and rural India, will be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the presence of the Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley at a formal function in Vigyan Bhavan.

While trial runs have already been on for some time, a test run which will make it available to other platforms commenced today (25 May).

Jaitley had said last month that the delay had been caused as the PM was traveling.

The channel, to be run by Doordarshan, was initially slated for launch on Makar Sankarti Day on 14 January, 2015.

A budget of Rs 100 crore had been set aside in July last year. However, this year’s budget had cut down Kisan TV’s corpus to Rs 90 crore for 2015-16.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, which also examines issues linked to the I&B Ministry had said in a recent report that emphasis should be laid on local dialect on regional basis so that farmers all across the country are able to access the channel in their local language/dialect, thereby getting benefited by this laudable initiative of the Government.

The Parliamentary Committee in a subsequent report also said that the Ministry should spend Rs 35 crore, earmarked in this year’s budget for content, judiciously.

The FTA channel will be available on major direct to home (DTH) platforms including Tata Sky, Videocon d2h, Dish TV apart from pubcasters’ own DTH platform Freedish.