The 75 million cable and satellite homes in the country will now have access to over 300 television channels, half of which are news and current affairs. The government has given permission to over 40 new channels to uplink and downlink in India in the past three months taking the total number of channels officially permitted in the country to 312. Till July, there were about 270 channels that had the neccessary permission to operate in the country.Out of the total channels, 255 channels have been granted permission to uplink and downlink from within the country while 57 channels, that are currently being uplinked from foreign country, have also been given permission to downlink.Out of the total 255 channels that are being uplinked from India, 149 are in the news and current affairs genre while 106 are in the non-news genre. In a written communication, Priyaranjan Das Munsi, Miniter of Information and Broadcasting informed the Pariliament that out of the total 255 channels permitted to uplink from India, 123 channels have Indian ownership whereas 132 have varying components of foreign equity in the parent company. "Out of the total 57 television channels uplinked from abroad and permitted to downlink in India, two channels have Indian equity whereas the remaining 55 TV channels have foreign equity," Dasmunsi said in a statement.
