The Hindu : Implementation of CAS hinges on elections outcome

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 03, 2003

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Implementation of CAS hinges on elections outcome

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI DEC. 2. The Assembly elections may have been wrapped up, but there is no move whatsoever in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to resurrect the Conditional Access System (CAS). With both the Union Minister of State for I&B, Ravi Shankar Prasad, and the Secretary out of station on the first day after the polls, a view could not be formulated today but the general perception in the Ministry is that a decision on the fate of CAS was no longer an administrative one, but political; one that had to be taken at the highest level.

For now, the Ministry is tight-lipped about CAS, preferring not to reopen the issue that preoccupied it for months on end. The maximum that officials are willing to hazard is that the fate of CAS now hinges on the outcome of the Assembly elections. Should the BJP do well and then decide to go in for an early Lok Sabha election next year — as is the general speculation — they feel that CAS would be kept in the cold storage till after the main battle of the ballot.

Whichever way things go, a final decision is out of the Ministry's purview as it was the top leadership of the country which decided to defer the introduction of CAS in Delhi till after the Assembly polls. "It will no longer be an administrative decision, it will purely be a political one."

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