After the Delhi High Court order dated March 10, 2006 to implement CAS within four weeks, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is running helter skelter, unable to decide whether to go to the Supreme Court against the order or implement CAS. Going to the Supreme Court does not seem a viable move as the High Court has very strongly condemned the government for being a spoil sport in implementing CAS on some pretext or the other and also for ignoring the earlier orders dated December 04 and December 26, 2003 in cases related to implementation of CAS or its withdrawal altogether. The Government was also rapped for ignoring the orders of two learned Judges of the Madras High Court who refused to defer the CAS implementation. The next obvious action is to implement CAS.
How thick skinned is our bureaucracy can be judged from the facts that they have been blatantly ignoring the Court Directives, Public Interest and Recommendations of a Task Force that worked for two years to come up with a plan to implement CAS. The issue has been in the news since 2002; four years and there has been no action, only TALKS, TALKS and TALKS. If there was any action, it was only to cause more delays. Sadly enough, even TRAI, the telecom regulator came in the picture but sat quiet after submitting the recommendations to the government in 2004.
The ten and a half hours long marathon meeting on 27 March, 2006 in the Ministry of I&B chaired by the Secretary, S.K. Arora involving all the stake holders once again appears as another effort to start the process afresh. I wonder why the government is doing this when nobody raised an eyelid to allow DTH companies to start operating with CAS. Are we trying to help DTH companies to establish well before implementing CAS on Cable? It appears like that; at least from the statements made by the Minister, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi who said DTH is a good alternative to CAS. Even the officials of the Ministry have been quoted as saying ‘CAS is an outdated technology’. They make countries like USA, UK, France, and Germany etc. look very backward who are still allowing CAS on Cable TV Networks.
I also wonder why the officials, politicians and the media always compare CAS with DTH and not Cable with DTH. CAS is a common denominator. Is it their plain and simple ignorance or a well cooked up plan to berate cable?
This month’s issue would solve a number of your queries similar to those stated above. Enjoy reading!
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