Wednesday, Sep 10, 2003
Wednesday, Sep 10, 2003 |
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Tamil Nadu-Chennai
By Our Staff Reporter
When two public interest petitions against making the CAS mandatory for Chennai came up before the First Bench, the Chief Justice, B. Subhashan Reddy, asked what explanation the Centre had for implementing the scheme in Chennai, even though it was originally planned for Mumbai and Kolkata also. Wondering whether the Government would introduce its schemes only in "convenient" places, the Chief Justice, who sat on the Bench along with Justice A. Kulasekaran, posted the matter for Friday, when the Additional Solicitor-General of India, V.T. Gopalan, would make a detailed submission on the Centre's stand.
Meeting on Centre's stand
While community-based organisations and consumers were watching the course of the case keenly, meetings were organised to explain the position of the Union Government to subscribers, a multi-system operator, who offered the service, and cable operators. At a meeting held on the Doordarshan premises here, the Additional Secretary, Information and Broadcasting Ministry, Vijay Singh, and the Joint Secretary, Rakesh Mohan, emphasised the government resolve to implement the CAS. The Central team had a meeting with the Chief Secretary, Lakshmi Pranesh, the Home Secretary, Syed Munir Hoda, and the Commissioner of Police, K.Vijay Kumar. Speaking after the meeting, Mr. Singh said the State Government suggested that the MSOs be asked to provide easy rental schemes, as this was necessary for non-permanent residents. The Centre would take up this issue with Sumangali Cable Vision, he said. It was in favour of competition at the local level to provide consumers a choice of service providers. The Centre would implement the CAS in other places too, he said. Consumer representatives, led by Exnora International, said they welcomed the CAS, but were puzzled at the Centre's failure to make the broadcasters abide by the amended regulations, which enabled its implementation. Though the regulations required the pay channels to advertise their pricing before the implementation date, many did not do so. The Centre could direct the cable TV operators to stop transmitting channels, which had not published their rates. The representatives wanted Doordarshan to start a cartoon channel and an English language channel, to fill the "missing links" in the free-to-air channels. One representative said the pricing of the channels, as given by a service provider, showed that the broadcasters were trying to thwart the law, pricing one popular channel very high and offering discounts on the overall package, to persuade consumers to buy all channels. The cable operators said it would not be viable to continue providing the free channels at the present price, unless revenue from set-top boxes was shared with them.
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