Strongly indicting Prasar Bharti for irregularities in the telecast rights for CWG Games, a high-level probe panel constituted by the government has blamed the governance structure established by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for the lapses saying it proved unequal to the task.

Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha today(22-02-20100,Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni said major findings of the first report of the High Level Committee have said that the governance structure established by the Ministry proved unequal to the task.

"While it enabled the Host Broadcasting Monitoring Committee headed by CEO Prasar Bharti to make recommendations and secure approvals of the oversight committee, the latter chaired by Minister of Information and Broadcasting were unable to prevent the abuse of authority or even observance of due process by the former," she said.

After its constitution in June 2009, the Group of Ministers on Commonwealth met 17 times up to March 5, 2010 when Prasar Bharti finally entered into an agreement with SIS Live.

The PB was part of the agenda in these meetings without any noticeable results, she quoted the report as saying.

The report further goes on to say that the Committee of Secretaries monitoring the preparations kept nudging the Prasar Bharti but then CEO B S Lalli remained "undeterred from his objective of awarding the contract to SIS Live and thereafter facilitate its assignment to Zoom communications".

"The CEO Prasar Bharti in concert with the DG Doordarshan and some other senior entities were able to imposerestrictive and inflexible conditions in the tendering process to discourage competition," it said.

Prasar Bharti assumed no role in planning, methodology and management by outsourcing Host Broadcast operations in their entirety and ignored quantitative and qualitative deviations in supply of equipment and instances of breach of contract, including non-supply of key personnel other staff and deliverables.

The report said that the CEO PB and DG DD were able to misrepresent and suppress information crucial for informed decision making, disregard or flout established pratices vis avis expression of interest or request for proposal thereby vitiating the selection process to the advantage of SIS Live.

Prasar Bharti has also deliberately delayed decisions to accomplish its pre-meditated objective as fait accompli, it said concluding that "these actions are strongly suggestive of collusion between CEO Prasar Bharti and Director General DD and the service provider".

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