BBC declares reorganisation for its operations in India

The BBC is changing how it works in India to follow the country’s rules about foreign investments.

Four workers are leaving the BBC to start a new company called Collective Newsroom. This company will be owned by Indians and will include the BBC’s six Indian language services.

The BBC will continue to gather news in India in English.

This year, the tax authorities searched the BBC’s offices in India as part of an investigation.

Foreign funding for digital news companies in India can only make up to 26% of their total funding under new rules.

The new rule says that most of the owners of a company publishing digital news in India must be Indian citizens.

Rupa Jha, who is in charge of India at the BBC, will be in charge of Collective Newsroom with Mukesh Sharma, Sanjoy Majumder, and Sara Hassan.

Employees from the six language services – BBC Gujarati, BBC Hindi, BBC Marathi, BBC Punjabi, BBC Tamil and BBC Telugu – will be part of the new company. Members of the BBC India YouTube channel in English will also join them.

“Ms Jha said that people in India can trust that the BBC’s programs in Indian languages will give them good information and entertainment. ”

The company is being looked at for breaking the rules about investing in other countries. Tax authorities searched its offices in Delhi and Mumbai.

The searches in February happened a few weeks after the TV aired a documentary in the UK that said bad things about the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Indian government said the searches were legal and were not related to the documentary, which was not shown in India at that time.

Over 300 people work for the BBC in India. The BBC started showing programs in Hindi in 1940.

Jonathan Munro, who is the deputy CEO of BBC News, said that BBC has a long history in India and it will continue to grow with the formation of Collective Newsroom.