Chennai: On Friday, The Madras high court has rejected the interim prayer plea in a petition filed by Cable TV association and declined to stay implementation of the TRAI’s New tariff regulations that are coming in to effect from 29th December 2018.
The Chennai Metro Cable TV (CAS) Operators Association, in its petition, sought to quash two notifications on the new regulations issued through media releases on November 19 and December 18 fixing December 29 as the deadline for implementing the tariff order.
It also sought an interim stay on implementation of the regulations vide the impugned press releases.
The TRAI counsel submitted that the matter was already raised by a social activist after the first communication was issue on December 18 specifying the deadline, it said.
Contending that proposed system was not consumer friendly, the petition claimed that the new arrangement under which each local cable operator (LCO) will have to ask consumer to choose the channel and collect the required fees was “unworkable”.
Presently, consumers can view all channels at a fixed price. But the new system compels the consumers to see only certain channels and this would affect their fundamental right and curtail rights to see all channels, it claimed.
Besides, it would lead to collapse of livelihood of the LCOs and result in chaos, the petition submitted. n March, 2017, had notified the new regulatory that was meted with litigations. It got a green signal when the Supreme Court had on October 30 dismissed a plea challenging the new regulation.
Justice S Vaidyanathan issued notice to the TRAI and posted the matter to January 3 for further hearing.
