By IANS
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Wednesday authorised the national broadcaster Prasar Bharti to telecast live on its network, the three-match India-Pakistan Test series beginning Thursday here.
The Prasar Bharati informed a bench headed by Chief Justice M.K. Sarma that arrangements had been made with the NEO sports, which has the original telecast rights, to show the series live to the viewers all over India.
The court was hearing a PIL, which had sought direction to the public broadcaster to telecast live all the Test matches involving India.
The government on Oct 3 had enacted the Sports Broadcasting Signal (mandatory sharing of feed with the Prasar Bharti) Act, 2007 and issued notification declaring that all private channels producing all official one-day international and Twenty20 matches played by Indian cricket team should share telecast with the public broadcaster Doordarshan by providing live feed.
The court order came as a relief to millions of Indian cricket fans, who had been waiting keenly for watching the high-pitch matches between India and Pakistan.
The petitioner, Ravi Dev Gupta, had submitted that the government notification did not mention that all Test matches will be treated as matches of national importance, which would mean that only hand-picked matches that the government thinks of as national importance would be shown on Doordarshan.
Another bench of the high court last week had directed the NEO Sports to share its cricket video feed with the Doordarshan and refused to accept its plea to stay the government’s order for mandatory sharing of the live feed of the game with public broadcasters Doordarshan and All India Radio.
Nimbus, which had bagged the four-year BCCI telecast rights last year for $612 million, had challenged the government’s uplinking guidelines to private broadcasters asking them to share the feed of sporting events of national interest with Doordarshan.