Months after income tax raids, BBC restructures India operations

Sleuths of income tax department outside BBC office during the raid on February 14, 2023. File Pic/AFP

British Broadcasting Corporation or BBC has announced the restructuring of its operations in India to comply with the country's foreign investment rules.

The company announced on Tuesday that four employees will leave the BBC to form a wholly Indian-owned company, Collective Newsroom, containing the BBC's six Indian language services.

The broadcaster's English language newsgathering operation in India will remain with the BBC, a news report published on the BBC website said.

BBC offices in India were searched in February this year as part of an investigation by income tax authorities.

The searches in New Delhi and Mumbai came weeks after the broadcaster aired a documentary in the UK critical of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Foreign funding for digital news companies based in India was capped at 26 per cent under new regulatory requirements, the report said. "The change effectively means any company publishing digital news content in the country must be majority-owned by Indian nationals."

Rupa Jha, currently the head of India at the BBC, will lead Collective Newsroom alongside Mukesh Sharma, Sanjoy Majumder and Sara Hassan.

Staff working in the six language services - BBC Gujarati, BBC Hindi, BBC Marathi, BBC Punjabi, BBC Tamil and BBC Telugu - will join the four in the new company, as will members of the BBC India YouTube channel in English, it informed.

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"Audiences in India can be assured that the BBC's Indian language services and unique range of quality output will inform, educate and entertain audiences across our diverse and highly engaged country under the agreement between the BBC and Collective Newsroom," the report quoted Jha as having said.

More than 300 staff currently work across the BBC's services in India. The BBC first broadcast in Hindi in 1940.

In May, this year the Delhi High Court issued notice to BBC on a plea by an NGO seeking damages, claiming its documentary "India: The Modi Question" casts a slur on the reputation of India and makes false and defamatory imputations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian judiciary.

Besides BBC (UK), Justice Sachin Datta also issued notice to BBC (India) on the plea filed by Gujarat-based NGO Justice On Trial.