The lawyer trying to get a rule overturned that prevents private FM stations in India from broadcasting news bulletins says citizens are being “denied their fundamental right to freedom of expression”.
Kamal Jaswal, from the NGO Common Cause, has launched Public Interest Ligitation (PIL) on Thursday, which India’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear.
In an interview with Asia Radio Today, Jaswal says the rule which forbids the airing of news and current affairs on private stations “defies logic”.
He says he’s bringing the case “independently of the radio industry” because he believes “the government’s monopoly on radio news is wrong”.
Ministers have previously said that it would be too difficult to monitor so many stations airing in so many languages across such a large country like India.
“They say they’re afraid of subversive material that has the potential to incite ill-will against other communities,” said Jaswal.
“But no other media faces these restrictions. Newspapers publish freely and so do scores of TV news channels. This is purely a political move.”
On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and gave the Indian government two weeks to defend the regulation, which it imposed during Phase II of private radio licensing in 2006.
The industry has welcomed the case, which comes ahead of Phase III, and will allow the auction of 839 new FM frequencies.
“The entire FM radio industry is in support of allowing news,” Prashant Panday, CEO of Radio Mirchi told Asia Radio Today.
“Obviously, the rule is discriminatory. The government’s reasons have all been bogus. How can there be censorship of this sort of FM radio when there is no censoring over TV and newspaper content?”
The government is planning to relax the rule somewhat during Phase III, which is long overdue.
New proposals will allow for the re-transmission of news bulletins from public broadcaster All India Radio (AIR), without modification.
But industry executives want to be free to pick their own news stories and mode of delivery.
“We believe we have a very good chance of winning this case,” Jaswal from Common Cause said.
Previously the Supreme Court has strongly criticised the government for its “monopoly over broadcasting”, according to the PIL filed with court officials.
The document says India is the only democracy where news and current affairs are forbidden on radio.
Jaswal reaffirmed that no third party had backed the case financially and that the NGO had no expectation of reward.
He hopes the Supreme Court will make a decision in “a year or less”.