Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar was elected today as Vice President of the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) in Macau, officials said here.
Apart from Sircar, representatives from Malaysian broadcaster RTM and Japan's NHK were also chosen as Vice Presidents while the representative from South Korean broadcaster KBS was chosen as the President.
Prasar Bharati officials said Sircar was elected unopposed.
Giving details, they said that Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) is a non-profit, non-government professional association of broadcasters. India is a founder member since 1964 and All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan have been associated with it.
ABU has 264 members in 61 countries reaching a potential audience of 3.5 billion people providing a forum promoting collective interests of TV and radio broadcasters internationally funded primarily by members.
It is the third largest of world's eight broadcasting unions, representing largest geographic region in the world, officials said.
Its sports department negotiates TV rights for major sporting events like Olympics and Asian Games, football World Cup besides several other related activities.
Prasar Bharati has immense stakes in ABU as India's national public service broadcaster, officials said.
They said that in the past some time the importance of the ABU and its role had faded away from Prasar Bharati's memory but added that India's public broadcaster was now back on the centre stage.
