Hyderabad : Justice SV Bhat of Hyderabad High Court on last Wednesday stayed the seven-day ban imposed by the Union information and broadcasting ministry on telecast of NTV channel from February 3, 2015.
The judge was passing these interim orders against a writ petition filed by Rachana Television which owns the news channel NTV.
The petitioner told the court that the ministry conducted inquiry regarding a program – Cine Colors – telecast in 2012 following a complaint. The ministry sought to know how the programme was aired without it being certified. The counsel for the petitioner clarified that the songs were certified but the voice-over was not certified.
The petitioner also told the ministry that it was telecast in good faith and there was no violation of Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act. The The judge then suspended the order of ministry of information and broadcasting.
Earlier, the I&B ministry issued a “Show Cause” notice to the channel following the complaint on which the channel management personally attended before the committee and denied the allegations. Not taking the channel’s version into account, the ministry decided to penalize the channel and ordered the channel to stop the telecast for seven days starting from 3rd to 10th February 2015.
