Doordarshan not to telecast Indo-Pak series live

    New Delhi: Doordarshan will not telecast live feed of the forthcoming cricket series between India and Pakistan as Prasar Bharti today agreed before the Supreme Court to air only 90-minute daily highlights of the Test series commencing from January 13. The government broadcaster will share the 90-minute telecast with Ten Sports, the exclusive telecast right holder for the coming Indo-Pak cricket series.

   The notice was issued by a bench headed by Ashok Bhan and Justice Tarun Chatterjee on a petition filed by Taj Television Ltd, owner of Ten Sports. In its petition to the apex court, Ten Sports challenged the provision of the new Policy Guidelines for Down-linking of TV Channels, 2005, which makes it mandatory for all private channels to share with Doordarshan the live telecast feed of sports events of national importance. The case will be heard again on January 30.

   Earlier, the channel had first approached the Bombay High Court to challenge the Centre's down-linking guidelines. The guidelines also made it clear that channels which had bagged exclusive telecast rights would have to share 25 percent marketing revenue with Doordarshan. Counsel of Ten Sports, Iqbal Chagla, said that the guidelines had no authority of law and as such infringed on the rights of the channel owners to carry out business. He argued that Ten Sports had won the rights at a high price and such rights could not be taken away. "Guidelines have no statutory force of law," he said, even as the channel bosses said 90 pecent of ad slots were already booked. The Bombay High Court on December 21 had admitted the plea but declined to grant the channel any interim relief. The division bench of Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice A S Oka stated that they were not inclined to grant stay on the Information and Broadcast guideline whereby Ten Sports, or sports channels having TV broadcasting rights, would have to share their feed with Prasar Bharati for national and international sporting events held in India or abroad. During the 45-day long tour of Pakistan, India is scheduled to play three Test matches and five one-day internationals there.

   The first Test match of the three match series will be played at Lahore's Qaddafi Stadium from January 13, second Test match from January 21 in Faisalabad and the third and final Test would be played in Karachi from January 29. The five-match one-day series will begin on February 6 in Peshawar. The second one-day international will be played in Rawalpindi on February 11, third one-day international in Lahore on February 13, fourth in Multan on February 16 and fifth and final one-day international in Karachi on February 19. The Indian Team will be chosen from: Rahul Dravid (Captain), Virender Sehwag (Vice-captain), Gautam Gambhir, Wasim Jaffer, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Sourav Ganguly, MS Dhoni (wicket-keeper), Parthiv Patel, Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Rudra Pratap Singh, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh.

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