Lok Sabha Television (LSTV) and Rajya Sabha Television (RSTV) have been merged into a single ‘Sansad TV’.

Live telecast of parliament

• Lok Sabha TV is the older of the two — it started operating on July 24, 2006.
• The channel’s vision, according to its website, is to reach the “live proceedings of the Parliament House…to every household”.
• This is because awareness of citizens towards the working of Member of Parliament in the Parliament House helps in bringing awareness about various efforts of various stakeholders in the governance process.
• The information empowers the citizens to utilise their democratic rights diligently and be part of the democratic ecosystem.

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The Union Budget allocates funds for the running of channels.

Inception of the idea

• LSTV was the brainchild of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.
• People familiar with the circumstances in which the channel was set up, said that then Rajya Sabha Chairman Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was not really convinced with Chatterjee’s proposal.
• It was during his time of Shekhawat’s successor, Hamid Ansari, that the separate channel for the Upper House materialized.

Before the channels

• Before LSTV started functioning as a channel, select parliamentary proceedings had been televised since December 20, 198.
• On April 18, 1994, the entire proceedings of Lok Sabha started to be filmed.
• And in August that year, a Low Power Transmitter (LPT) was set up and made operational in Parliament House to telecast the proceedings live.
• From December 1994, Question Hour in both Houses was telecast live on alternate weeks on Doordarshan.
• It was arranged in such a manner that during the telecast of the Question Hour of one House by Doordarshan, the Question Hour of the other House was broadcast by All India Radio.
• When the DD News channel was launched, Question Hour in both Houses started getting telecast simultaneously on DD channels.

Separate channels

• But it was only after a decade, in December 2004, that a separate dedicated satellite channel was set up for the live telecast of the proceedings of both Houses.
• In 2006, LSTV started airing the proceedings of the Lower House live.
• RSTV was launched in 2011. Apart from telecasting live the proceedings in Rajya Sabha, it also brings analyses of parliamentary affairs and provides a platform for knowledge-based programmes.

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