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Tag: Anti-CAS

  • Anti-CAS PIL hearing postponed till Friday

    Anti-CAS PIL hearing postponed till Friday

    NEW DELHI: Delhi’s cable fraternity is breathing a sigh of relief following the postponement of a hearing on a public interest litigation (PIL) in a Delhi court till 19 December.

    Now the industry has got time till Friday to chalk out a strategy on CAS (conditional access system).

    The joint petition was filed yesterday by Consumer Coordination Council (CCC), a coalition of 50 consumer bodies and Consumer Online Foundation (COF) set up by lawyers.

    The first hearing which was scheduled earlier today could not be heard by the court as the counsel for the petitioners was not fully prepared and had not arrived, sources said.

    The petitioners have alleged that CAS, in its present form is anti-consumer, and that the government has not woven in proper safety measures for the people before mandating the law.

    For example, there is no body or a platform that a consumer can approach if the cable operators don’t provide after-sales and maintenance services for the set-top boxes (STBs) sold to them for addressability.

    Seeking a regulatory body like the Telecom Regulatory authority of India (TRAI) to be put in place before CAS is rolled out, the petitioners have said, “On a conservative estimate, CAS under implementation across the 40 million cable and satellite homes has been estimated to cost the consumers nearly Rs 160,000 million with no commensurate benefit to the consumers.”

    TRAI has pleaded that the government had acted in a partisan manner by pointing out that “the Act (facilitating rollout of CAS), on the contrary, is unconstitutional, anti-consumer, a burden on the national exchequer and a colorable exercise of power by the respondent (the Union of India through the I&B ministry).”

    Meanwhile, having woken up in the morning to this new twist in the tale, the multi-system and cable operators said that “vested interests” were trying to derail the CAS implementation process, something that was showing signs of picking up in South Delhi areas after a not-so-successful playout in Chennai.

    The Delhi government’s entertainment tax department also released ads in the dailies today informing consumers about the ‘dos and don’ts of CAS’.

    As stated earlier by indiantelevision.com, the cable ops also reiterated yesterday that consumers would continue getting entertainment channels like Star Plus, Sony and Zee TV as usual.

  • Anti-CAS camp in BJP meets Advani; I&B seeks law ministry advice

    Anti-CAS camp in BJP meets Advani; I&B seeks law ministry advice

    NEW DELHI: The chorus against conditional access system (CAS) has reached the office of deputy prime minister LK Advani. On the pro-CAS side, the information and broadcasting ministry has reportedly sought the advice of the law ministry on whether “errant” pay channels can be reined in through some legislative measures in case they fail to declare their individual pricing for a post-CAS regime.
     
     
    According to a senior government official, nothing concrete on CAS can be said at the moment and the government is still hoping that broadcasters would fall in line and declare the prices of the pay channels before 14 July.

    Though the government is said to be studying various options, it is becoming increasingly clear that rationing or regulating the quantum of ads carried by pay channels through a legislation may prove a tricky option.

    The government official also said that at this juncture government intervention is not foreseen if the broadcasters want to have variable pricing through dual illumination or some other such mechanism.

    “In a way variable pricing already exists as certain sections of Delhi, especially the far flung places, pay a lower monthly cable bill than in upmarket areas like South Delhi,” the official said.

    But the broadcasting lobby is also not giving up. Today additional secretary in the information and broadcasting ministry Vijay Singh had Discovery India country head Deepak Shourie and ESPN India’s outgoing country head Manu Sawhney paying him a visit.

    However, Shourie said they came to “discuss other things” than CAS with the bureaucrat.

    Meanwhile, former chief minister of Delhi and a senior Bharatiya Janata Party member Madan Lal Khurana, along with Pramod Mahajan and others, is understood to have called on Advani to request him to see that implementation of CAS is deferred, at least in Delhi.

    Though details of the meeting were not known till the time of writing this report, it is expected that Khurana and company petitioned for the delaying of CAS, particularly with state elections scheduled to be held in five states, including Delhi, by October-November.

    Khurana’s stand is that CAS smells as foul as rotten onions. According to political folklore, in the last elections held in Delhi, the BJP lost power to the Congress because there was a severe shortage of onions and the public sentiment is said to have gone against the then ruling party.