NEW DELHI: Auditioning and hiring of radio jockeys for All India Radio’s FM channels has been stayed by the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) following a plea that there is no clarity on the position and service conditions of the existing RJs and presenters who have been working at AIR FM for a long time.

The CAT has directed the government to "consider the representations of the applicants and dispose of them by a reasoned and speaking order". It also restrained the Information and Broadcasting Ministry from conducting the auditions or engaging casual RJs "till the representations are disposed of".

AIR Broadcasting Association (AIRBA) had alleged that there was already a large number of RJs engaged on contract by AIR FM and "both the FM channels of Delhi station were crammed". The application had also pleaded that it had "become impossible" to assign a fair share of duties to the existing presenters and objected to the proposal of hiring fresh presenters.

The AIR was scheduled to conduct auditions to hire RJs from 28 January.

The AIRBA said "the inaction" of the government "in formulating any policy regarding the strength of RJ Presenters and their service conditions and at the same time initiating the process of inducting fresh RJ presenters" was "arbitrary, illegal, unjust and unconstitutional".

The AIRBA had approached the CAT after the Ministry, Prasar Bharati and All India Radio failed to respond to repeated requests by presenters to fix sanctioned strength of employees or address representations submitted over the past three years regarding fixing of duty charts, payment of arrears and other service conditions. The AIRBA had given a list of six separate representations made by the Presenters' Association to the government and AIR in this regard between 2011 and 2012.