The High Court in the Indian state of Kerala has extended, till next Monday (February 7), its interim order, staying the Indian government’s decision to cancel the permission to telecast Malayalam TV news channel MediaOne.
A bench of Justice N. Nagaresh had on January 31 stayed the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting order revoking its licence to broadcast till the next hearing date on Wednesday.
In its recent hearing the court asked New Delhi to produce before it the relevant files of the Ministry of Home Affairs which recommended the cancella-tion of the licence of the channel for national secu-rity reasons.
Appearing for the Centre, Assistant Solicitor General, S. Manu informed the Court that the chan-nel’s licence was cancelled due to security reasons, which cannot be revealed in the open court and wanted the stay order not be extended.
But the counsel for the TV channel told the court that the national security cannot be a reason to cancel the licence without prior notice.
The court insisted that the reason for revoking the licence should be revealed and then asked all the relevant files be produced before it and posted the case for Monday.—INP
