Raghu Menon elected as IPDC chairman

New Delhi, Mar 25 (ANI): Union Information and Broadcasting Secretary Raghu Menon has elected as the Chairman of the Inter-Governmental Council of the International Programme for Development of Communication (IPDC).

The Inter-Governmental Council of the IPDC was established in 1980 and implements national, regional and inter-regional projects in the areas of promotion of freedom of expression and media pluralism, development of community media, capacity building and promotion of international partnership.

With this, India became the first developing country to have occupied the coveted IPDC chairmanship.

It may be noted that, since its inception, the Chairmanship had always remained with developed countries.

According to the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry, India's candidature was endorsed by Asia Pacific Regional Group and supported by countries from Africa, Arab and Latin American Region.

India won the election with 23 out of 37 votes against Switzerland who got 14 votes.

Menon, in his acceptance speech, thanked the members of the Inter-Governmental Council for reposing faith in his leadership and assured his full commitment for strengthening programme implementation under IPDC's mandates.

Apart from media development as a vehicle for fostering good governance, democracy and transparency, Menon also highlighted the need for media to be inclusive so as to ensure spread, reach and coverage of media accessibility to all the citizens.

Inclusiveness would result in bridging the urban rural divide, reaching economically under-privileged sections of the society and to make full use of the technological advance to provide access to information at affordable costs.

In his address, Menon underlined the spin-off effect of the projects under implementation by IPDC in influencing policy formulation by Member States and underlined the importance of greater generation of resources for IPDC.

India has contributed 1.4 million dollars to IPDC programme since its inception and is strongly committed to the fund and its programmes.

India will be Chair of the Inter-Governmental Council of IPDC till its next session in 2012.(ANI)