New Delhi, Sep 14 (IANS): Vice President M. Venkaih Naidu will inaugurate the Sansad Television here on Wednesday, a Lok Sabha Secretariat note said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla along with other dignitaries will be gracing the function.

Sansad TV is being launched after merging the Lok Sabha TV and the Rajya Sabha TV channels.

Lok Sabha TV (LSTV) was made operational in July 2006 keeping in mind the people's right to know what their elected representatives are saying in the Parliament.

It was the brainchild of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee who introduced the idea of a 24x7 parliamentary channel with the objective to acquaint citizens with the functioning of the House.

Prior to the full-time channel, televising of select parliamentary proceedings was initiated on December 20, 1989 with the live telecast of the address by the President to the members of both the Houses of the Parliament.

A separate dedicated satellite channel was set up on December 14, 2004 for telecasting 'live' the proceedings of both the Houses of the Parliament. LSTV was owned by the Parliament of India.

Similarly, the Rajya Sabha TV (RSTV) was a public cable television channel owned and operated by the Rajya Sabha, which covered the proceedings of the Upper House.

Apart from telecasting live coverage of Rajya Sabha proceedings, RSTV also provided a platform for knowledge-based programmes.

In March 2021, it was decided to merge both RSTV and LSTV into a combined parliamentary service named Sansad TV.