Govt asked to spell out stand on CAS by July 5

New Delhi, May 24 (UNI) Refusing to give nine months for the implementation of the Conditional Access System (CAS) in the metropolis, the Delhi High Court today directed the Government to take a categorical stand on the issue by July 5.

A division bench headed by Justice Virender Jain directed the government to pay the penalty of Rs 1 lakh, as ordered by the single judge, to the cable operators body for delaying the implementation.

The bench's strong observation followed after senior counsel Ram Jethmalani insisted that the Centre should pay a compensation of Rs 1,000 crore to the companies who had purchased the required infrastructure for the manufacture of CAS instruments.

The Centre submitted that it would need at least 265 more days to implement the CAS in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata as it was still in the process of consultations with various stakeholders.

While stating that the CAS can not be implemented so soon, the Centre in its appeal said numerous obligations have to be carried out with the broadcaster, Multi-Service cable Operators (MSOs), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in consultation with respective state governments to implement CAS.

The consumers would not be able to shift to CAS within a short period of four weeks and would lead to utter confusion and chaos as there was no consensus on subscription charges, bifurcation of free to air and pay channels, and their pricing and availability of set top boxes, the appeal stated.

According to the government, the implementation of CAS was not solely dependent on it as it had just a facilitative role to play in terms of issuing relevant notifications relating to setting out of legal obligations on its implementation.

Implementation of CAS on the prescribed date of implementation would lead a complete blackout of all pay channels as neither the broadcasters would be in a position to broadcast their individual pay channels nor MSOs and local cable operators would be able to retransmit them to the consumers, it stated, adding "this would be injurious to the interests of consumers for whom the CAS has been designed..." According to the appeal, the I and B ministry was holding regular meetings with all the stakeholders to arrive at a modified scheme which was acceptable to all and capable of being implemented on ground.

UNI PAT LS KP1737