Samachar (

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

for "information") was founded in February 1976, after the merger of

United News of India United News of India (UNI) is a multilingual news agency in India. It was founded On 19 December 1959 as an English news agency. Its commercial operations were started from 21 March 1961. With its ''Univarta'', a Hindi news service, UNI became on ...

Press Trust of India The Press Trust of India Ltd., commonly known as PTI, is the largest news agency in India. It is headquartered in New Delhi and is a nonprofit cooperative among more than 500 Indian newspapers. It has over 500 full-time employees , including abo ...

Samachar Bharati Samachar (Hindi for "information") was founded in February 1976, after the merger of United News of India, Press Trust of India, Samachar Bharati and Hindustan Samachar. The news agency was directly under the control of the government of I ...

and

Hindustan Samachar Hindusthan Samachar is the first multilingual news agency in India subscribed by more than 200 newspapers and almost all the news channels including Door Darshan (DD). It was set up in 1948 by S. S. Apte, offering its services in 10 languages: B ...

. The

news agency A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency may ...

was directly under the control of the

government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

Background

During the period of emergency, on 26 July 1975,

took the decision to merge the four teleprinter news agencies of India and form a single nationalised news agency. The employees' unions of the four agencies supported the idea. Hence in February 1976,

PTI PTI may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Pardon the Interruption'', an American television sports show * PTI, a musical group on the WTII Records label Organizations * Pacific Torah Institute, a yeshiva high school in Vancouver, British Columb ...

and

were merged to form a single news agency, ''Samachar''. After the defeat of

Indira Gandhi Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (; Given name, ''née'' Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was elected as third prime minister of India in 1966 ...

's government in 1977 election, ''

Kuldip Nayar Kuldip Nayar (14 August 1923 – 23 August 2018) was an Indian journalist, syndicated columnist, human rights activist, author and former High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom noted for his long career as a left-wing political comme ...

Committee'' was formed to examine the structure of ''Samachar'' as news agency. On 14 November 1977, the committee recommended the independence of the four news agency as they were before the emergency period. Thus, on 14 April 1978, all four news agencies split from Samachar, and Samachar became the news portal of

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * News agencies based in India Mass media companies established in 1976 1976 establishments in India {{India-company-stub