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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