SHC fines seven channels for showing excessive ads, wasting court’s time

KARACHI: A two-judge bench of the Sindh High Court, headed by Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi, while imposing fine of Rs50,000 on Pakistan Broadcasting Association, ARY and other private television channels on a petition filed against a judgment of Pemra, has dismissed the petition.

Earlier, the Pakistan Broadcasting Association and others had pleaded in the petition that five members of the applicant Pakistan Broadcasting Association possessed licences to run private TV channels, and according to law transmissions of television channels including ARY News, Aaj News, Sindh TV, KTN, Kavish, Apna News, Kook TV were being run, but Pemra had issued a show-cause notice to the petitioners in which it had been stated that the said channels were telecasting sub-standard programmes and they were also exceeding the prescribed duration for advertisements as well which was a contravention of Pemra laws, and, therefore, the said channels are issued show-cause notices and imposed a fine of Rs100,000, and that the amount of fine would be raised from Rs100,000 to Rs200,000 on account of violation of the laws.

It was also stated in the petition that the show-case notice sent by Pemra is unlawful because the petitioners have been following Pemra laws, and, therefore, the court is requested to declare the show-cause notice sent by Pemra and the imposition of fine as unlawful and thus to dismiss it.While rejecting the petition on Monday, the two-judge bench of the Sindh High Court imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on the petitioners for wasting the time of court.

Source: The News