Hindusthan Samachar, a news agency linked with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will breathe new life owing to the BJP government’s latest policy on print media advertisements, reported Hindustan Times.
The agency has been included as part of the three news agencies that newspapers will have to subscribe to in order to score points to qualify for government ads. The other two agencies are the Press Trust of India (PTI) and the United News of India (UNI).
As a step to increase transparency, the government’s new policy, announced in June, will start a marking scheme to identify medium and large newspapers that could get its advertisements for the maximum impact.
They have to score at least 45 out of a possible 100. Newspapers that subscribe to any of the three news agencies will get 15 points.
Started in 1948 by RSS leader Shivram Shankar Apte, Hindusthan Samachar began as a multilingual agency. It, however, ran into trouble during the 1975 Emergency, eventually shutting down in 1986. It could never revive again.
It now hopes to revive and financially expand with the return of the BJP government. The policy could aid in raising the subscription revenue for the news agency.
When questioned on whether it mirrors the Sangh’s ideology, Satish Raghuvanshi, who heads the agency’s business development said its reportage only reflected its own “nationalist views”, fulfilled the “expectation of diversity in news.”
A senior government official also refuted the perception that the move is politically motivated and said that the entry of Hindusthan Samachar into the list was done on merit, not ideology.