HC rejects Centre's appeal for time on CAS

The Delhi High Court today refused to give nine months time to the Centre to implement the Conditional Access System (CAS) in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.

While asking the government to clarify its stand before July 5 which is the next date of hearing, a division Bench headed by Justice Virender Jain directed the government to pay a 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 pay a compensation of Rs 1,000 crore to the multi-service cable operators (MSOs) who had purchased the required infrastructure for implementing CAS.

However, the Centre submitted that it would need at least 265 more days to implement CAS as it was still in the process of consultation with various stakeholders.

While stating that CAS could not be implemented so soon, the Centre in its appeal said numerous obligations had to be carried out with the broadcaster, MSOs and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in consultation with state governments.

Consumers would not be able to shift to CAS within a short period of four weeks and this would lead to confusion. There was no consensus on subscription charges, bifurcation of free-to-air and pay channels, and pricing and availability of set top boxes, the appeal stated.

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

Were CAS implemented on the prescribed date it would lead to blackout of all pay channels as broadcasters would not be in a position to present individual pay channels and MSOs and local cable operators would not be able to retransmit them to consumers, the appeal stated.