The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notice in the special leave petition filed by Malayalam news channel MediaOne assailing Kerala High Court’s order of upholding the recent ban imposed on it by the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry, Live Law reported.
A bench comprising of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath have posted the matter for next Tuesday to consider interim relief and also asked the Centre to produce the relevant files on which the reliance was placed by the High Court.
Appearing for Media One, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, submitted that there was no complaint against the channel during the ten years of it’s functioning. There is no requirement for security clearance at the time of renewal.
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, also appearing for the Malayalam news channel, said that it had over 2.5 crore viewers and downlinking permission was granted to it as late as on 2019
“For a regional channel to survive is very difficult. We have hundreds of employees. How do we feed them?” submitted Rohatgi, requesting for interim relief.
In the petition, the channel contended that the exact reasons for the union government’s non-renewal of the license have not been revealed to them and the High Court approved the decision on the basis of certain sealed cover files produced by the Ministry of Home Affairs, purportedly raising some national security concerns.
The petitioner further contended that the uplinking and downlinking guidelines make it clear that security clearance is not a factor to be considered for renewing the licence.
On January 31, the union Ministry suspended Media One’s telecast citing security concerns. The channel owned by Jamaat-e-Islami went off the air on the very same day.
