In the letter, the producers said that apart from hurting the sentiments of millions of viewers of quality Urdu programmes all over the country and even neighbouring countries, the delays in clearing proposals was also posing a financial burden on them.
"We may emphasise that each of the undersigned producers have undergone several hardships apart from spending large sums of money on preparing these proposals and are therefore anxious that Doordarshan should expeditiously take a decision in this regard," the letter written by the aggrieved producers, said.
"It may be noted that DD Urdu has been functioning only with repeat programmes or those taken from DD Kashmir for more than three years," the producers wrote in the letter.
Speaking to PTI, one of the producers said that proposals for Commissioning of Programmes were invited twice and a total of around 1,069 proposals were submitted.
The producer claimed that a processing fee of Rs 25,000 had been charged for each proposal and reputed writers, directors and language experts were engaged by his counterparts keeping in mind the guidelines and competition.
Other expenses had also been made during presentation like air/rail travel, hotel and local conveyance for the experts, the producer said.
They said said that this issue needs to be examined by the concerned Parliamentary Committee to examine the apathy of Doordarshan and Prasar Bharati towards Urdu.
When asked for a response, a senior Doordarshan official, who was not willing to be named, said that "processing of proposals of DD Urdu was underway and soon there would a development in this regard."
