B.P. Jeevan Reddy ORDER
P.B. Sawant, J.
1. Leave granted.
It will be convenient to answer the questions of law that arise in the present case, before we advert to the factual controversy between the parties. The questions of law are :
(1) Has an organiser or producer of any event a right to get the event telecast through an agency of his choice whether national or foreign?
(2) Has such organiser a choice of the agency of telecasting, particularly when the exercise of his right, does not make demand on any of the frequencies owned, commanded or controlled by the Government or the Government agencies like the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) or Doordarshan (DD)?
(3) Can such an organiser be prevented from creating the terrestrial signal and denied the facility of merely uplinking the terrestrial signal to the satellite owned by another agency whether foreign or national?
(4) What, if any, are the conditions which can be imposed by the Government department which in the present case is the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) for (a) creating terrestrial signal of the event and (b) granting facilities of uplinking to a satellite not owned or controlled by the Government or its agencies?
On answers to these questions depend the answers to the incidental questions such as (i) whether the Government or the Government agencies like DD in the present case, have a monopoly of creating terrestrial signals and of telecasting them or refusing to telecast them, (ii) whether the Government or Government agencies like DD can claim to be the host broadcaster for all events whether produced or organised by it or by anybody else in the country and can insist upon the organiser or the agency for telecasting engaged by him, to take the signal only from the Government or Government agency and telecast it only with its permission or jointly with it.
2. To appreciate the thrust of the above questions and the answers to them, it is necessary first to have a proper understanding of what 'telecasting' means and what its legal dimensions and consequences are. Telecasting is a system of communication either audio or visual or both. We are concerned in the present case with audio-visual telecommunication. The first stage in telecasting is to generate the audio-visual signals of the events or of the information which is sought to be communicated. When the event to be telecast takes place on the earth, necessarily the signal is generated on the earth by the requisite electronic mechanism such as the audio-visual recorder. This stage may be described as the recording stage. The events may be spontaneous, accidental, natural or organised. The spontaneous, accidental and natural events are by their nature uncontrollable. But the organised events can be controlled by the law of the land. In our country, since the organisation of an event is an aspect of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression protected by Article 19(1)(a), the law can be made to control the organisation of such events only for the purposes of imposing reasonable restrictions in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity........