New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre and Prasar Bharati on an ESPN-Star Sports' petition to restrain them from taking coercive action for not sharing its exclusive feed of the India-South Africa cricket matches being played in South Africa.

A Bench consisting of Justices Ashok Bhan and Dalveer Bhandari asked the Union of India, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry and Prasar Bharati to file their replies by January 6 and listed the case for January 8.

Exclusive rights

ESPN-Star Sports said it had filed a writ petition in the Delhi High court seeking to quash the downlinking guidelines, issued in November 2005, compelling the television channels to share the telecast of all matches even if they were played outside India. This petition was subsequently shifted to the apex court.

The petitioner said though it had exclusive rights for the telecast of the matches it apprehended that the Government would penalise the channel by invoking the provisions under the downlinking guidelines. Prasar Bharati had requested it to share the feed with Doordarshan's terrestrial channel and proposed sharing of revenue in the ratio of 75:25. ESPN-Star Sports said it was willing to share the dirty feed (the signal along with advertisements and logo) provided Prasar Bharti paid Rs 3.5 crore for one-day internationals as compensation for loss of subscription revenue.

It was apparent that Prasar Bharati only wanted to make money and was not really interested whether the public were able to watch cricket matches or not, the petitioner said. It sought quashing of the guidelines on downlinking policy.

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