Samachar (

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

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

United News of India United News of India, abbreviated as 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 servic ...

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 450 Indian newspapers. It has over 500 full-time employees , including abo ...

, Samachar Bharati and Hindustan Samachar. 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 ma ...

was directly under the control of the

government of India The Government of India (ISO 15919, ISO: Bhārata Sarakāra, legally the Union Government or Union of India or the Central Government) is the national authority of the Republic of India, located in South Asia, consisting of States and union t ...

Background

During the period of

emergency An emergency is an urgent, unexpected, and usually dangerous situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment and requires immediate action. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening ...

, 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, Hindustan Samachar and Samachar Bharati 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 stateswoman who served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 un ...

'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 com ...

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 15919, ISO: Bhārata Sarakāra, legally the Union Government or Union of India or the Central Government) is the national authority of the Republic of India, located in South Asia, consisting of States and union t ...

References

Bibliography

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