High Court Orders TV Today Network To Deposit 5 Lakh

High court orders TV Today Network, asked to deposit 5 lakh amount of fine.

The Bombay High Court orders TV Today Network Ltd, which operates the India Today channel, to deposit a penalty of Rs five lakh imposed on it by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) in the court registry.

A division bench of Justices Nitin Jamdar and Milind Jadhav was hearing a petition filed by TV Today Network on Thursday.

The petition challenged the penalty imposed by BARC’s Disciplinary Council on 31 July 2020 for alleged TRP disturbances.

The petitioner’s counsel Virender Tuljapurkar also requested the court to direct the BARC not to take any strict steps till the petition is pending, seeking interim relief. Bark’s lawyer Ashish Kamat opposed granting interim relief.

The bench said that it will hear the petition on November 5. The court said you (petitioner) can deposit a fine of Rs five lakh in the registry of this court. If you do this, there is no question of Bark taking strict steps.

The Bombay High Court has said that the media is now polarized to a great extent when it was not. Earlier journalists used to be impartial. The media has its own responsibility to check and balance based journalism.

The bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Dutta and Justice GS Kulkarni said this while hearing the petitions against the media trial in the case of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death.

Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, appearing for CBI in the hearing, clarified that during the investigation, no information was leaked to the media.

Not only this, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) also did not give any information regarding the case to the media. In this regard, all three central agencies have filed affidavits on their behalf.

The ASG said all three agencies assume their responsibility. In such a situation, there is no question of leaking information.

The petitions filed in the court have sought to direct the media to exercise restraint in the coverage of the case. During the hearing, TV news content was required to have a legal system.

On this, the lawyers of the news channels said, the court has rejected such demand in the past, so there should be no consideration for making any such arrangement.