The Punjab and Haryana High Court in the case Pratap Singh Bajwa v. State of Punjab observed and has issued the petition filed by Punjab’s opposition leader Pratap Singh Bajwa, wherein it alleged biased telecast of the State Assembly proceedings.
The Division bench comprising of Acting Chief Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Nidhi Gupta in the case observed and has issued the notices to the State government, the Speaker and the Assembly’s Secretary.
In the present case, Bajwa alleged that during Assembly’s Live Telecast, the camera is unfocussed when opposition MLAs are speaking and the entirety of their speech is not shown, whereby the telecast is very clear when members of the ruling party are speaking.
It has been submitted by Bajwa in the petition moved that when the ruling party members are speaking, the camera is focused and the entirety of the audio is picked up as well as ‘camera is zoomed into the AAP speaker’ to make it clear who is speaking.
He in the case also annexed various shots of the Vidhan Sabha stating that it showcases the unequal treatment towards the opposition.
The court in the case observed that the MLAs of the opposition and MLAs of the government are both representatives of their respective constituency, hence the discrimination trickles down to subjecting their constituents to discrimination.
The court had also enquired as to who is responsible to run the live broadcast…is it a private company or someone else? Is there any statute under which it is governed.?
It has also been submitted by the petitioner that as per the RTI response received by him, the live telecast of the proceedings of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha is arranged by the Department of Information and Public Relations, Government of Punjab, Chandigarh with the permission of Honb’le Speaker, Punjab Vidhan Sabha.
Adding to it, the RTI stated that the Punjab Legislative Assembly has not yet framed any rules, instructions and guidelines regarding Live Telecast of the proceedings of House till date.
It has also been stated before the court that the information with regards to the expenditure on broadcasting of virtual proceedings in Punjab Vidhan Sabha may be obtained from the Information and Public Relations Department, Punjab and no such expense are incurred by the Vidhan Sabha Secretariat for this purpose
The court while considering the facts and circumstances of the case stated that the High Court has taken the RTI response on record and asked the State to file its response in 4 weeks.
The counsel, Advocate Arshpreet Kadial appeared for the petitioner.