Government to undertake 100 days Good Governance Campaign from 25th December

New Delhi: Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu, Minister for Information & Broadcasting has said that the vision of the Government under the leadership of Hon’ble Prime Minister is to position the nation on a sustainable growth trajectory. The Government is committed to bring about transformational changes in the country with the mantra of ‘Reform, Perform & Transform’. The vision has been depicted in the Government of India Calendar 2017 with the theme “Mera Desh Badal Raha Hai, Aage Badh Raha Hai”. He mentioned this while delivering his address at the release of the Government of India Calendar 2017. On the occasion, Shri Naidu Also released the Press in India Report 2015-16 prepared by Registrar of Newspapers of India. Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore was also present on the occasion.

Shri Naidu also announced that starting from 25^th December this year, the Government would be launching a 100 days campaign across the country on the theme of Good Governance. Ministers, Members of the Parliament would be travelling across the country to highlight key initiatives of the Government that has been taken in the last two and a half years. Good Governance Day is observed on the birth anniversary of the former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In this context, he mentioned that the endeavour of the Government is to improve delivery systems, need to promote digital transformation and take forward the connectivity revolution in all sectors.

Speaking further Shri Naidu stated that the phenomenal growth of the print media sector has mandated changes in the print media policy/guidelines in the past years. The need to update policies keeping in mind the changing dynamics in the print media sector, has resulted in evolving a robust mechanism for RNI to maintain an updated list of Publications in the Country. This mechanism also facilitated weeding out illegal publications that may prove to be an irritant to law enforcement agencies. On the New Print Advertisement Policy framework, the Minister said that it provided for circulation verification Procedure for empanelment of Newspapers and Journals with DAVP. The procedure involved certification by RNI if circulation exceeds 45,000 copies per publishing day.

The Minister also gave a broad analysis of the general trend of the Indian Print Media based on the Annual Report by RNI. He said that the Indian print industry continued its growth story at a steady rate of 5.13% over the previous year. A total of 5,423 new publications had been registered during the year 2015-16 with the total number of Registered Publications as on 31st March, 2016 standing at 1, 10,851. Giving the Circulation-wise details, Shri Naidu said that Hindi publications continued to lead with 31,44,55,106 copies per publishing day followed by English with 6,54,13,443 copies and Urdu with 5,17,75,006 copies per publishing day.

Earlier, Shri Naidu also launched the Government of India Digital Calendar 2017 App. He added that the calendar App can be downloaded from google play store at free of cost. The Government of India Calendar showcases various flagship schemes and initiatives of the Government identifying a different theme every month. The details are as mentioned below:

• Jan:     Skilling India for Youth Led Development
• Feb:    Empowering the Poor
• Mar:   Sashakt Nari, Sashakt Bharat
• April: Futuristic India through Infrastructure Building
• May:  MSME: India’s Economic Backbone
• June: Farmers: Bread Winners of our Nation
• July:   Rural Electrification: Lightning Every Home
• Aug:    Armed Forces: Pride of the Nation
• Sept:   Cashless Transactions
• Oct:     Swachh Bharat: New Vigour to Sanitation
• Nov:   Corruption Free Governance
• Dec:    Sugamya Bharat: Accessible India

The highlights of the Press in India Report is given below: