The impassé is over. Nimbus Communications has offered to share live feed of Saturday’s ODI versus Sri Lanka and ‘national sporting events’ with national broadcaster Doordarshan.This has come about following threats in the form of an ordinance, a possible show-cause notice (to be sent by Prasar Bharti, authorised by the I&B ministry) threatening to cancel its licence, and now a Delhi High Court order. The tough posturing of Information & Broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi has finally paid off.So what about that notice to Nimbus threatening to cancel its uplinking-downlinking licence and a fine of Rs 1 crore in line with the ordinance? “It would be kept in abeyance till such time that Parliament can pass the bill,” the order said.The court has asked the government to keep the showcause notice hanging till the next hearing on March 9, by which time Dasmunsi is confident that “the bill will be passed, (making sharing of live feed of any sporting event, considered to be of national importance by the government, mandatory) in an Act of Parliament.” Earlier in the day, Nimbus sought the court’s protection from the showcause notice threatening to cancel operating licence. The private broadcaster bought the cricket telecast rights from the BCCI for a whopping sum. After deferring the hearing during the last Indo-Sri Lankan match, today the Delhi High Court directed Nimbus to “share live feed” of the last match of the Indo-Sri Lankan series with the public broadcaster. Despite promulgation of the ordinance, Nimbus had been providing a seven-minute delayed feed of the previous ODI matches, putting the government in an embarrassing fix.“We could have taken tougher action against them (Nimbus). Instead, we sought their reply before taking any action”, said the minister. “We did everything for the benefit of the DD viewers,’’ he added.
