The NDTV Group yesterday said that it moved the Supreme Court against the one-day government ban on its Hindi news channel channel NDTV India, saying such a ban is "illegal and unconstitutional", Times of India reports. A Union information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry committee in India last Thursday ordered that the channel go off air for 24 hours from 00:01hrs on November 9, as it found its coverage of the January terrorist attack in Pathankot "to be in violation of broadcasting norms." It said the channel gave out sensitive information that could have been used by the handlers of the terrorists involved in the attack.
Official sources said that as the content appeared to violate programming norms, a show-cause notice was issued to the channel in January. The channel appealed against the order before the I&B committee, arguing that the purported violations were based on " subjective interpretation " and that most of the information was already available in print, electronic and social media. In June 2015, the I&B ministry had introduced a new clause in the programme code that said broadcasters were prohibited from "live coverage of any anti-terrorist operation by security forces, wherein media coverage shall be restricted to periodic briefing by an officer designated by the appropriate government till such operation concludes".