Phoenix Legal and senior counsel Ramji Srinivasan won for Arnab Goswami’s new TV news venture Republic in the Delhi high court, after the India Today Group withdrew its writ that we had first reported yesterday, which challenged Republic for allegedly violating the telecom law to gain unprecedented TV ratings (TRP).
The writ by India Today Group’s news channel TV Today claimed that Republic had purchased multiple listings on the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) of various operators, thus violating TRAI regulations under which one channel can be listed only under one genre.
After both the Republic as well as TV Today submitted in court today that they were registered only under in the “news and current affairs” genre on the EPG with a single channel, TRAI said that several similar complaints were also pending against other channels including the petitioner and would be dealt with together.
TV Today is understood to have withdrawn the writ after that and the matter was disposed of.
The Republic TV channel has already displayed the headline that the Delhi high court refused to hear the writ.
India Today was represented by
Comments
Dear Guest, it was not an application that was withdrawn. There was no option left but to withdraw the petition. Secondly, as the order clearly records, the petitioner itself was allegedly involved in the wrongdoing that it wanted the court to direct TRAI/UOI to rectify. The order also did not injunct BARC from publishing the viewership data, which was the prime motive of the petitioner. Be around in the courts and perhaps you would realize that this was a win, through and through.
Dear Guest1, sorry to disappoint you but the real irony is that it is quite apparent that you have not read the order at all, forget carefully. Not all reporters are bad ;)