NEW DELHI: Action was taken by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry (I&B) 74 times against different television channels in the three years between April 2011 and March 2014.
Of these, action mostly in the form of advisories was taken suo moto by the I&B Ministry 12 times – seven against general entertainment channels and five against news channels.
Of the balance 62 cases, there were reports of violation by GECs 46 times and news channels 16 times.
In 16 cases, channels had to stop transmission for varying periods, while other punishments were either warnings or directives to run apology scrolls.
There were only six cases relating to advertisements, four of them about deodorants and two about liquor.
There is only one case where a channel was prohibited from telecasting a certain film in day-time following a Court order.
The rest of the cases were about telecast of adult certified films before 11.00 pm or in day-time, screening films without showing the certificate of the Central Board of Film Certification, obscene or vulgar content, scenes denigrating children or likely to affect them, revealing identity of sexually abused women or children, inflammatory or provocative matter, scenes that showed the lower castes or dalits in a bad light, and scenes promoting superstition or blind belief.
Individually, action was initiated against Bindass five times and three times each against Sony Entertainment Television, Colors, and Manoranjan TV. Action was initiated twice in the case of Channel V, SS TV, FTV and Comedy Central. 40 other channels faced action only once each.
The advisories from the Ministry related to guidelines relating to taking children in TV programmes or hiding identity of trauma-affected children, telecast of quiz-based programmes, against programmes promoting superstition and blind belief, news about movement of troops, showing as news scenes from uncertified films, barring telecast of a round-the-clock public demonstration, comparison of prime minister’s speech on Independence Day with that of other leaders, and live telecast of Republic Day parade from Doordarshan with sign language interpretation.
