Former PM Manmohan Singh’s office requests Doordarshan for video, visual material of speeches made

NEW DELHI: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s office has requested Doordarshan to provide video recordings and visual material of the speeches he made and functions he attended during his tenure as PM from 2004 to 2014.

"It is true that Dr Manmohan Singh had requested for video recordings of his speeches. We have no issue at all with that," said Dr Surya Prakash, chairman at Prasar Bharti, which runs Doordarshan and All India Radio. Officials said Doordarshan has already provided some of the video recordings and is in the process of garnering the remaining recordings from its archives.

"Some of the recordings were provided with the due approval of the Prasar Bharati Board," Rashmi Pradhan, deputy director general, DD-Archives, said in an emailed response to ET.

In keeping with a Prasar Bharti Board resolution passed a few years back, the recordings are being shared free of cost as a mark of respect, sources said.
Meanwhile, all textual material and written speeches made by Dr Singh as PM are already up on the website http://archivepmo.nic.in — a webbased repository created on all former PMs.

The collection there includes Dr Singh’s last address to the nation, his many speeches, interviews, an e-book of his entire ten year tenure to 2014. A former close associate of Dr Singh said that the former PM was keen on building an archive of what he had done while in office not just for record but also because there are many scholars, researchers and authors interested in accessing information related to his tenure.

Incidentally, one of the first moves made towards archiving of the former PM’s public speeches and comments had run into a political controversy when, soon after the LS election results, the PMO archived and renamed the official PMO twitter handle.

While the BJP cried foul, saying this was improper and disrupted continuity of the Government, the PMO was quick to put out a statement saying, "All official communications from PMO in print and in digital form are being archived according to RTI Act.

Copyrights and control remain with the PMO. The handover is being facilitated for the next administration. This is the first time such handover is taking place, leading to speculation."