NEW DELHI: Despite self-regulation having been put in place by the news and general entertainment channels, 25 notices were issued by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry against various channels for showing excessive violence, vulgarity and obscenity during the current year 2011.

This also shows an increase of depiction of violence, vulgarity and obscenity since 13 notices were issued in 2010, 15 in 2009 and 18 in 2008 against various channels.

While the Advertising Standards Council of India (Asci) was asked to take action against various channels for vulgarity in the advertisements of Axe, Zatak and, Set Wet deodorants which asked the channels to withdraw the advertisements, the Ministry issued show cause notice in the remaining 22 cases during 2011.
 
The Bindass channel was issued notices four times, including once for the series ‘Emotional Atyaachar‘ for which it had received a notice in 2010 and once for the series ‘Dadagiri‘ for which it had been issued notices in 2008 and 2009 as well for different episodes. Channel [V] was also issued notice twice for different programmes.

News channels also came under the scanner, with notices being issued to Times Now, News 9, Sahara Samay, and P7. News 9 has been asked to run an apology scroll, while both Sahara Samay and P7 have already complied by running apology scrolls.

Other channels issued notices include FTV, Sony, Star World, Fox Crime, Sony Pix, FX channel, Zee Trendz, People TV, NDTV Good Times, MTV, and TLC.

In 11 cases during 2011, the matter is still under consideration. Interestingly, the notices against Times Now and Sony which are under consideration were for telecast of trailers of the film ‘Dirty Picture‘ which has since been commercially released with ‘A‘ certificate.

In the other cases, advisories or warnings were issued or the channels were asked to run apology scrolls.