'Did Not Involve In Any Anti-National Activity': News Channel MediaOne Moves Kerala High Court Against Centre's Ban

Popular Malayalam news channel MediaOne has filed a writ petition before the Kerala High Court on Monday seeking to set aside an order issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting revoking its license.

They have also sought a stay on the order pending disposal of the petition. 

This comes a few hours after the Ministry suspended the telecast of MediaOne citing security concerns. Reports suggest that the television channel was found backing the Jamaat-e-Islami. Accordingly, MediaOne went off air today at noon.

Notably, a broadcasting ban is not the first time for MediaOne. Earlier in 2020, the Centre had imposed a ban of 48 hours on the channel for violating provisions of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1998 while reporting the riots in northeast Delhi.

In its plea filed through Advocate Rakesh K, the channel has contended that it has not involved itself in any sort of anti-national activity. Therefore, it was prayed that considering the huge investment involved in the business, the order of the Ministry be withdrawn. 

The Centre had earlier issued permission enabling the petitioner channel to uplink and downlink TV programmes, and this permission was valid till 29.09.2021. 

The petitioner was reportedly issued with a show-cause notice by the Centre on January 5, 2022, on why the Centre should not revoke its license in consideration of national security and public order

In response to this notice, the company had requested not to proceed with the notice without affording an opportunity of hearing and that they were not informed of the reasons why the security clearance was denied. 

However, the Ministry allegedly proceeded to revoke the permission granted to the petitioner with immediate effect, thereby removing the channel from the list of permitted channels. 

"The petitioner is running a channel having high reputation in the field of broadcasting of news and current affairs and it is unfortunate that the permission of the petitioner is unilaterally revoked on unfounded allegations," reads the plea. 

It was alleged that such a rash move without affording an opportunity of hearing or informing the particulars of their contravention jeopardised the channel. 

On these, among other grounds, the company sought the following reliefs from the Court.

• Call for records leading up to the order revoking its licence and set aside the same;
• Direct the respondents to afford an opportunity of hearing to the petitioner before passing any orders of revoking licence;
• Declare that there are no warranting circumstances either to decline security clearance or to revoke the licenses the petitioner has not contravened any law or committed any anti-national activity.

They added that it was an apparent violation of principles of natural justice and therefore liable to be set aside. 

Case Title: Madhyamam Broadcasting Limited v. Union of India