Telangana: Zakir Naik's Peace TV points at cable TV holes
Special branches of the city police and Intelligence departments have only a handful of staff monitoring a few news channels.
Hyderabad: Following the controversy over the telecast of Peace TV owned by Dr Zakir Naik, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has warned cable operators that they will be responsible for the content being aired.
But neither the police nor cable operators monitor TV telecast as mandated by the Cable TV Regulation Act. There are more than 892 TV channels in India including 120 Telugu ones.
Special branches of the city police of Hyderabad, Cyberabad, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada, and Intelligence departments have only a handful of staff monitoring a few news channels.
Deputy secretary Shankar Lal in his order stated, “…As per Section 5 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995, no person shall transmit or re-transmit through a cable service any programme unless such programme is in conformity with the programme code. Transmission or re-transmission of any TV channel in violation of the Act by any cable operator is an offence which attracts action against the operators by the authorized officers.
“However, it has come to the notice of this Ministry that some private satellite TV channels, which are not permitted by this Ministry, are being transmitted by some cable operators on their networks.” The Telangana Cable Opera-tors Welfare Association president N. Jitendar said, “Local Cable Operators have nothing to do with content. After digitisation all the content is being provided by the multi-system operators and with the help of boosters we transmit it through cable to the customer.”
He continued: “The content is provided by MSOs. We will write to multi-system operators asking them not to give signal of banned channels. Our association is against anything that harms the sovereignty of the country, and we are for national security. If anything comes to our notice we will intimate the police.”
Chairman of Subodhaya Digital Private Limited Prabhakar Reddy said, “We are not telecasting any banned channel.
“Following the police commissioner’s direction, for the past five to six years Peace TV is not being telecast here. There are seven control rooms with technical staff to give signals and the staff monitors the channels.”