BBC Hives Off News Room In India To Separate Company Following FDI Questioning (image@BBCBreaking)

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) has hived off its newsrooms in India. The move comes less than a year after being questioned by the Income Tax authorities of India for the alleged violations. BBC handed over its publishing license to a private limited company which was established by its Indian employees. This is the first for BBC to do so from anywhere in the world.

Under the new arrangement, which is going to start off from next week, a private limited newsroom named as Collective Newsroom has been set up by four former employees of the public service broadcaster. BBC’s India offices will produce all of India content in seven languages – Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu – for its digital services. Reportedly, BBC have applied to the Indian government for 26 percentage stake in the private limited company.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Collective Newsroom, Rupa Jha said that, “It’s unprecedented for the BBC to grant their license to publish to another entity…We will not compromise our journalism and the BBC is solidly behind us”, as quoted by The Indian Express. Jha was the senior news editor at BBC India, and is one of the four shareholders of the Collective Newsroom.

The new arrangement in the operation of BBC in India is stemmed from the new Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) rules that was introduced in 2020. The FDI rules imposed a 26 % FDI limit in India’s digital media sector.

Earlier, the editorial operations of BBC in the country were operated by BBC India. More than 99 percentage of BBC India was owned by the UK-based broadcaster. Since the investment cap was introduced, companies exceeding the 26 percentage limit were asked to reduce their foreign investment to comply with this regulation by October 2021. It had over 200 employees, who were now moved to the Collective Newsroom.

The UK broadcaster’s India bureau is its largest bureau outside the United Kingdom. It began its broadcasting in 1940. In February last year, BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai were searched by the income tax authorities, few days after it aired a documentary, India: The Modi Question, that featured the 2002 Gujarat riots.