The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is set to restructure its operations in India following increased regulation by local tax authorities. The restructuring will involve splitting its operations into two separate entities, the ‘Financial Times’ reported.
The BBC has announced that it is establishing an independent Indian company called Collective Newsroom. This company will produce content for six regional BBC channels that broadcast in Indian languages such as Hindi and Punjabi. The BBC has applied for a 26 per cent stake in Collective Newsroom, but will operate largely independently of the broadcaster to comply with strict government regulations.
The new media company will be owned and run by Indian BBC journalists who are leaving the corporation. It will provide news and other programs through a service agreement with a British news channel that broadcasts in English and six Indian languages.
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Before the split, the BBC had around 300 journalists in India, with around 80 of them continuing to work directly for the BBC’s news operations.
The restructuring comes after Indian tax authorities raided the BBC’s offices in India in 2023, an operation that lasted several days.
The raid, referred to by the government as a “tax probe”. This comes days after the BBC aired a documentary that examined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s involvement in communal riots during his tenure as Gujarat chief minister.
The Indian government condemned the documentary and imposed strict regulations to ban the sharing of any clips or footage from it, despite it only being broadcast in the UK.
Subsequently, officials from India’s income tax department questioned senior BBC staff for three days, although the government denied any link between the raids and the documentary, citing an investigation into alleged violations of India’s foreign investment regulations.
Despite these challenges, the BBC said it remains committed to producing content from India, not only in English but also in Indian languages. Collective Newsroom will also be able to produce content for other Indian broadcasters, although it remains uncertain whether it will be subject to the same standards of impartiality as all other BBC programmes.
