'What Kind Of Petition Is This': SC Dismisses Plea For Free Services From TV Channels, Streaming Apps During Lockdown

The Bench comprising of Justices NV Ramana, SK Kaul and BR Gavai pulled up advocate Manohar Pratap, the petitioner, for filing such a petition who immediately assured the Court that he would withdraw the same.

"What kind of petitions are being filed?!" quipped the Bench as the matter came up for consideration.

The petitioner had urged the Court to direct the Centre and relevant authorities to instruct various service providers to make the same available under the garb of ensuring psychological well-being of citizens.

The high probability of entities such as Reliance, Bharti Airtel, TataSky, Netflix, Vodafone, Amazon Retail and others not providing any free services of communication and entertainment to the citizens, could be detrimental to their life and liberty as enumerated under Article 21 of the Constitution, submitted the petition.

In this light, the Centre and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) were urged to invoke relevant terms of agreement of licenses granted to DTH service providers to enable completely free and unlimited viewing facility of their channels and other contents to their subscribers during the lockdown period.

It had been highlighted that humans are social and emotional being who require social interactions, various modes of entertainment to keep their psychological well-being in good form.