NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday said it wanted to “tighten up” the self-regulatory mechanism of monitoring TV news channels and granted four more weeks to News Broadcasters and Digital Association to come up with fresh guidelines.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra took note of submissions that the NBDA was in consultation with its present and former chairpersons, Justice (retd) A K Sikri and R V Raveendran, respectively, for framing fresh guidelines. Senior advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for NBDA, sought four weeks to come up with fresh guidelines.
The bench during the hearing took note of the fact that NBDA for framing fresh guidelines was already in consultation with former Justices AK Sikri and R.V. Raveendran. The court was considering NBDA's plea against the Bombay HC order of making adverse observations against it on the self-regulation of TV channels.
Apprising the court of the meetings that NBDA conducted with Justices AK Sikri and RV Raveendran, Datar told the court it was “reframing the entire guidelines.” The Centre on its part appearing through SG Tushar Mehta told the court that the existence of a statutory regime took care of the court’s concerns regarding self-regulation.
As the centre also pointed out regarding NBDA's failure to register under the rules, Senior Advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for the News Broadcaster Federation of India (NBFI), said it was the only regulatory body registered with the Centre as per the 2022 rules, unlike NBDA.
“We cannot sort out your ideological differences (NBDA and NBFI) here. We do not want this plea to get lost in the cacophony of rival organisations,” the CJI said.
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