The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Notice to Centre on Sun TV's DTH application

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Notice to Centre on Sun TV's DTH application

Staff Reporter

Application being processed due to political pressure, says AIADMK MP "Purely due to political reasons, files are jumping from one Ministry to another."

CHENNAI: An All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) MP has moved the Madras High Court seeking to restrain the Centre from processing the Direct to Home (DTH) application of the Sun TV group and to reject it forthwith.

Admitting the public interest litigation petition from AIADMK parliamentary party leader P.G. Narayanan, a vacation bench ordered notices to the Centre and directed it to file its counter by May 24.

According to the petitioner, an application by the Sun Direct Television Private Limited for DTH services was being "processed due to political pressure" despite the fact that the applicant-group was disqualified from applying for the licence. There was a bar on people, who were in the business of cable networks, from applying for the DTH licence.

He added that the processing of the application would violate provisions of the Competition Act 2002, which strived to avoid monopolistic and restrictive trade practices.

Pointing out that the group owned Sumangali Cable Vision (SCV), involved in ground distribution works, the MP said that due to an interim order of stay, SCV had made the conditional access system through a set-top box mandatory in Chennai.

When the matter came up for hearing, N. Jothi, counsel for petitioner, said there was "something fishy" in the whole matter and added that "purely due to political reasons, files are jumping from one Ministry to another."

"Flawed"

Denying the allegations, the Additional Solicitor-General, V.T. Gopalan, said the prayer in the petition was "flawed" as it sought to restrain the Centre, which was allegedly "intending" to process the application. Such an order, if granted, would amount to stifling the statutory functions of the executive, he said, and pointed out that the petitioner did not allege any lack of jurisdiction in the matter.

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