Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati is learnt to have tied up with Hindusthan Samachar, a news agency founded by VHP founder S.S. Apte in 1948, for the news feed for All India Radio and Doordarshan in a contract signed on February 14.

The news portal, The Wire, reported on Sunday morning about Prasar Bharati signing a contract with Hindusthan Samachar.

Prasar Bharati will pay Hindusthan Samachar Rs 7.69 crore for the contract that will run for a little over two years, ending on March 31, 2025.

Opposition MPs criticised the agreement with Hindustan Samachar. “Finally. Best to merge Prasar Bharati and BJP,’’ tweeted Jawhar Sircar, the Trinamul Congress MP who was the chief executive officer of Prasar Bharati from 2012 to 2016.

“It’s now official! DD & AIR will exclusively broadcast as ‘news’ only the content fed by the RSS! Prasar Bharati has terminated its contract with PTI & engaged Hindustan Samachar established by Golwalkar & Apte, founder of VHP, to provide news feed,’’ tweeted CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury. According to the memorandum of agreement, Hindusthan Samachar will provide at least 100 news reports daily to Prasar Bharati, including a minimum of 10 national news reports and 40 local reports in the specified regional languages.

Hindusthan Samachar’s national coverage is in Hindi and Urdu while its regional feed is available in Marathi, Odiya, Bangla, Asamiya, Punjabi, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, English and Nepali.

The deal comes over two years after Prasar Bharati ended its subscription to the country’s largest news agency, the Press Trust of India, in October 2020.

The public broadcaster had suggested the decision was dictated by purely commercial considerations though it was widely perceived to be triggered by differences over the handling of news by the wire service.

The government was particularly miffed with a PTI interview with the Chinese ambassador and a report from Beijing during the Ladakh stand-off. In a letter to PTI on the interview with the Chinese ambassador in 2020, Prasar Bharati had accused the news agency of undermining India’s “territorial integrity” by dispensing news that is “detrimental to the national interest”.

Along with PTI, Prasar Bharati also ended its subscription to the United News of India (UNI).

The public broadcaster’s contention was that this was done following a review of its relationship with the country’s oldest news agencies after differences arose over the annual subscription.

Hindusthan Samachar was let in by Prasar Bharati on a trial basis from the early years of the Narendra Modi government but there was some resistance within AIR and Doordarshan’s editorial team.