MUMBAI: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting secretary Sushma Singh is to retire on 31 May 2009.
Confirming the development, Singh said that her tenure as the secretary, I&B Ministry, gets over by the end of this month.
Singh had taken charge on 3 July 2008 after the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet announced repatriation of then secretary Asha Swarup to her parent cadre in Himachal Pradesh.
An Indian Administrative Service officer from Jharkhand of the 1972 batch, Singh was secretary in the ministry for Panchayati Raj, prior to her stint with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Before that, Singh had served as secretary in the ministry for North East affairs.
At the Ficci Frames in February this year, Singh had said that the government has allowed political advertisements on FM radio with a view to mitigating the effects of falling advertising spend due to the economic slowdown. The smouldering issue of music royalties payable by FM stations to labels, and the process of amending the FM Phase II policy for the launch of FM Phase III in about 275 cities with as many as 790 channels was taken up.
The I&B ministry is currently dealing with a number of pending issues like the roll-out of Conditional Access System in rest of the three metros, policy initiatives on HITS, Mobile TV and the new FDI guidelines for the broadcasting sector amongst others.