Supreme Court To Hear MediaOne's Appeal On March 10

The appeal filed by the company that owns the MediaOne news channel was mentioned before the Bench of the Chief Justice today by the Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave.

The Supreme Court agreed to list the matter before the appropriate bench on March 11. The date was subsequently advanced to March, 10 on a second mentioning by the Senior Advocate.

A bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justice A S Bopanna took note of the submissions that the plea needed an urgent hearing.

"This is too serious. For 11 years, we have been functioning and we have 350 employees and millions of viewers. We have been shut down because of some secret files from the Home Ministry. Both the single judge and the division bench of the high court have justified this (action of the government) behind my back", the Dushyant Dave said.

"This is too serious and the issue involved is right to information and freedom of press", he said.

List on Friday before an appropriate bench, the CJI said.

Earlier, the Kerala High Court upheld the Centre's decision to bar telecast of the Malayalam news channel and had dismissed the plea of Madhyamam Broadcasting Ltd, which operates MediaOne challenging the central government's January 31 decision.

The High Court had said that the decision of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to deny security clearance was based on intelligence inputs received from various agencies.

The central government had also said that the MHA denied security clearance over national security concerns based on intelligence inputs.

The channel had contended that MHA clearance was only required at the time for fresh permission/license and not at the time of renewal.

It had also contended that, according to the uplinking and downlinking guidelines, security clearance was only required at the time of application for fresh permission and not at the time of renewal of licence.

The Division Bench had dismissed the appeal of the channel, against which an SLP has been preferred before the Supreme Court.