'No legal bar on foreign investment in print media'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG. 7. The Law Ministry is understood to have told the Information and Broadcasting Ministry that there is no legal bar in allowing foreign investment in print media. Viewing it as a purely administrative matter, the Law Ministry has taken the stand that no question of law is involved in the issue which was referred to it by the I&B Ministry recently after five editors/publishers advocated delinking the question of foreign investment in print media from that of foreign media entry.

With this, the issue is back in the I&B Ministry's court even as it continues to reiterate its commitment to the Cabinet Resolution of 1955 which governs the print media policy of the country.

As per this Resolution, no foreign-owned newspaper or periodical should, in future, be allowed to be published in India. Also, the Resolution does not allow foreign newspapers and periodicals which deal mainly with news and current affairs to bring out Indian editions.

The debate over foreign investment in print media began afresh after the I&B Minister, Ms. Sushma Swaraj, decided to forward the representation made by the five editors/publishers to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology which has been discussing the issue of foreign media entry since January this year. Later, the I&B Ministry referred this representation to the Law Ministry for legal opinion.

According to Ms. Swaraj, it was forwarded to the Standing Committee to explore the possibility of a political consensus on the issue. Also, she has asked the five editors/publishers - Mr. T. N. Ninan of Business Standard, Mr. Aroon Purie of India Today, Mr. Shekhar Gupta of The Indian Express, Mr. Narendra Mohan of Dainik Jagran and Mr. Chandan Mitra of The Pioneer - to put their suggestion before the industry to see if a consensus was possible within the fraternity.

The five editors/publishers were of the view that ``investment made by any Indian company or by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and Overseas Corporate Bodies (OCBs) in the print media will not, in any way, violate the Cabinet Resolution of 1955 because such investments, in no way, permit the publication of foreign newspapers in India''.

The present policy, in their opinion, has come in the way of ``even unconnected policies that would strengthen and help Indian print media''. Pointing out that Indian print media companies were being denied permission to access resources from Indian companies such as the ICICI because they have minority foreign share holdings in their equity, the media representatives underlined the fact that this was happening in an era of globalisation when ``capital can and needs to be accessed from anywhere''.

They have argued that allowing Indian media access to a larger pool of capital would ``strengthen and help them become stronger competitors''. Further, it is their submission that investment in print media by FIIs, NRIs or OCBs would not dilute control of the media in any way, and ``certainly not bring in foreign media''.

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