ILNA protests against DAVP ad rules

mumbai: the indian language newspapers association on saturday lodged its protest against the new rules framed by the directorate of audio visual publicity regarding circulation figure of newspapers and urged the union government to look into the matter. ilna members, at its executive committee meeting, resolved to protest the "unilateral, irrational and arbitrary" application of advertisement guidelines which had adversely affected many newspapers in regard to advertisement rates fixed by davp, a release said. davp is accepting only registrar of newspapers for india certified newspapers with circulation above 20,000 instead of the ca certificate submitted by newspapers, as was done so far. rni verification of circulation of newspapers is not regular and is undertaken every three to four years. with the application of the rule of rni certificate, davp had cut the advertisement rates of many newspapers whose circulation, verified by rni, was outdated, the release said. the meeting was held under the chairmanship of its president, r lakshmipathy. ilna had no objection to rni certificate being made compulsory but the rule should be applied only after rni sets some machinery to update the circulation data every year, the release said. until then, davp should continue to accept rni/ca certificate, which ever had the latest data, so that newspapers could have appropriate davp rate, ilna demanded. ilna has urged the government to look into the matter and rectify the "gross injustice". meanwhile, five members were elected on saturday to ilna's executive committee. they are pratap pawar (sakal, pune), hormusji cama (mumbai samachar, mumbai), shardul vikram gupta (aaj, varanasi), chaitanya kumar kashyap (chetna, ratlam) and amit chopra (punjab kesari, jalandhar).