NDTV challenges the government's one-day ban of its Hindi channel NDTV India
NDTV has
challenged the government's one-day ban of its Hindi channel in the Supreme Court today. NDTV India has been ordered off-air on Wednesday with the government accusing it of broadcasting sensitive details of January's terror attack on the air force base in Pathankot.
NDTV has refuted the allegations and pointed out that other channels and newspapers reported the same information.
The ban has been widely
condemned by journalists and editors with all press councils drawing parallels to the Emergency of the 1970s when basic constitutional rights including the freedom of the press were blatantly violated.
The
Editors' Guild of India said the order was unprecedented and that the centre appears to have given itself the power "to intervene in the functioning of the media and take arbitrary punitive action as and when it does not agree with the coverage." The organization, a grouping of the editors of all major newspapers and magazines in the country, said if the government finds any media coverage objectionable, it can approach the courts.
Defending the ban, Information and Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu said over the weekend that it was "in the interest of the country's security" and that the barrage of criticism confronted by the government appears
"politically inspired."