The Supreme Court on Friday allowed Comedy Central to go on air and stayed Delhi High Court’s order upholding the Centre’s decision to stop transmission of the entertainment channel for 10 days for allegedly broadcasting “obscene” and “vulgar” dialogues.
“As an interim measure, it is directed that the direction issued by the high court by its order dated November 24, banning the channel in toto with effect from November 26, shall remain stayed. However, the direction to remove the programmes or telecasting them in the channel, shall remain operational,” a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said.
The high court on November 24 had upheld the Centre’s decision to stop for 10 days transmission of the channel for airing shows having “obscene” and “vulgar” dialogues besides being derogatory to women, observing these may influence the future generation.
Comedy Central had approached the apex court challenging the high court’s order upholding the Centre’s decision to stop its transmission for 10 days.
Accepting the recommendation of Inter Ministerial Council (IMC), the Information & Broadcasting Ministry on May 17 had asked Comedy Central to go off air for telecasting “offensive” words in ‘Stand Up Club’ and ‘Popcorn’ programmes on May 26 and July 4 in 2013.
The ministry had prohibited the channel’s transmission or retransmission for 10 days on any platform throughout India with effect from 00:01 hours on May 25 till 00:01 hours on June 4.
Reacting to the Supreme Court order, Sujeet Jain, Group General Counsel of Viacom 18 Media, said that the channel will resume broadcasting on Friday evening.