Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Information & Broadcasting and Sports & Youth Affairs Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore (Retd.) flagged off 9 DSNG Vans of Doordarshan here today. Secretary Ministry of Information & Broadcasting Shri Amit Khare, DG Doordarshan Smt Supriya Sahoo and other senior officials of the Ministry were also present on the occasion.Speaking on the occasion Col Rajyavardhan Rathore (Retd.) said that his Government stresses on Act East Policy and a lot of development efforts are taking place in North East India in this regard. Deployment of more DSNG vans in North East will help in making the development stories from North East reach the people.As a part of fleet augmentation programme to enhance the capacity of Doordarshan for live broadcasting, 9 new C-Band DSNG vans has been inducted, which are capable of uplinking HD signals. These vans have been procured at a cost of Rs.22.83 Cr (at Rs.2.54 Cr each) through a Global Tender.
These DSNG Units would enable Doordarshan to enhance its live telecast capability from the North-East as 4 of these DSNGs are meant for Gangtok, Kohima, Imphal and Agartala. Since North-East is the focus area of the Government of India, these would provide a boost to the news gathering as well as programming initiatives from the hitherto uncovered areas in the North East. Apart from this, new DSNG units are also being deployed at Allahabad, Visakhapatnam, Chandigarh, Jagdalpur and Pune. Doordarshan has a fleet of 34 DSNGs which are deployed across the country. 16 of these DSNGs operate in C Band while 18 operate in Ku Band. However, out of 34 DSNGs only 2 are capable of uplinking HD signals, at present. DSNGs are Mobile Earth Stations which enable broadcasting from any remote place through a satellite system.