The BBC has hived off its newsroom in India, handing over its publishing license to a private limited company established by its Indian employees — a first for the public service broadcaster’s global operations anywhere in the world.
Under this new arrangement, starting next week, a private limited company called the “Collective Newsroom” has been set up by four former BBC employees.
Its India offices will produce all of the India content in seven languages for the BBC’s digital services in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. The BBC is learnt to have applied to the Indian government for a 26% stake in this private limited company.
Rupa Jha, Chief Executive Officer of the Collective Newsroom, said, “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.”
Jha, who was the senior news editor at BBC India, is one of the four founding shareholders of Collective Newsroom. Previously, the BBC’s editorial operations in the country were managed by BBC India, more than 99 percent of which was owned by the UK-based broadcaster itself.
However, once the investment cap was introduced, companies exceeding the 26 percent FDI limit were required to reduce their foreign investment to comply with this regulation by October 2021.
The BBC’s India operating in India since 1940 has taken this extreme decision following raids by Income Tax authorities for alleged violations. The restructuring comes almost 10 months after India’s Income Tax officials raided BBC India offices in Delhi and Mumbai, leading to further investigation by India’s financial crimes agency, the Directorate of Enforcement.
What the government described as “surveys” came just weeks after the BBC aired a documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots that angered the Indian government. It featured an assessment from the UK government of the time that said prime minister Narendra Modi was “directly responsible” for the circumstances leading up to violence in which more than 1,000 people – many of them Muslims – were killed.
