I&B Ministry
Business Standard’s foreign investment proposal cleared by I&B ministry
NEW DELHI: India’s Information and Broadcasting ministry has cleared a proposal of Business Standard Ltd. that had sought government permission to get injected with foreign investment amounting to Rs 141 million from the London-based Financial Times, published by the diversified media company, Pearson.
After the ministry’s go-ahead, the road has been smoothened for the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) to give the final green signal to the proposal.
According to government officials, the relevant files were signed by the I&B minister Ravi Shankar Prasad earlier this week.But, interestingly, a debate is going on within the I&B ministry whether the present policy guidelines allow printing and publication of Indian editions of foreign newspapers and magazines from India and the opinion is said to be divided on the matter.
This debate was kickstarted after Bennett Coleman and Co. – publishers of The Times of India (TOI) and The Economic Times, announced that a memorandum of understanding had been signed with the publishers of The Asian Wall Street Journal for printing an Indian edition of the business newspaper with an Indian acting as editor.
The MoU, it had been stated, would be within the specified guidelines where up to 26 per cent foreign investment is permitted in the news category of the print medium, though the government has not yet been approached formally by the TOI group for clearances.
In Business Standard’s (BS) case, printing and/or publication of The Financial Times (FT) has not been dwelt on in the application.
Government officials also said today that the total foreign investment in BSL would amount to slightly over 15 per cent, though originally FT was slated to pick up 13.85 per cent equity stake.
The BS-FT tie-up was the first major foreign investment in an Indian newspaper by a strategic investor.
The Business Standard and The Financial Times had begun to cooperate a decade ago, through editorial syndication of reports from FT’s 300 correspondents worldwide. This relationship has expanded over the years.
When finally cleared by the FIPB, Financial Times will join the Kotak Mahindra group and Great Eastern Shipping as the leading investors in Business Standard Ltd., which will continue to operate as an independent entity, with its management reporting to the Board, on which The Financial Times will have appropriate representation.
Business Standard is published from seven centres in India, and as India’s second largest financial newspaper, reaches copies to readers in over 500 towns and cities every day. The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading business newspapers, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. Providing extensive news, comment and analysis, the newspaper is printed in 21 cities across the globe, has a daily circulation of over 460,000 and a readership of more than 1.6 million people worldwide.
Other global print medium players who have evinced interest in either setting up shop in India or tying up with an India media company, include US business magazine BusinessWeek, Par Golf from Exposure Media and Intelligent Computing Chip from TBW Publishing.
I&B Ministry
India turns up the heat on piracy, orders Telegram to axe 3,142 channels and blocks 800 websites
New legal teeth, nodal officers and notices to intermediaries signal that the government is done playing nice with copyright thieves
NEW DELHI: India’s war on film piracy just got significantly more aggressive. The government has ordered Telegram to remove 3,142 channels distributing pirated content, blocked access to around 800 websites through internet service providers, and put the full weight of freshly sharpened legislation behind the crackdown. The message from New Delhi is unambiguous: the free ride for copyright thieves is over.
Minister of state for information and broadcasting L. Murugan spelled out the legal architecture to the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. The Cinematograph (Amendment) Act, 2023, he said, now contains specific provisions designed to make piracy a genuinely painful proposition. Sections 6AA and 6AB prohibit unauthorised recording and transmission of films, with violations attracting a minimum of three months’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 3 lakh. At the upper end, offenders face three years behind bars and fines of up to 5 per cent of a film’s audited gross production cost — a figure that, for a big-budget production, could run into crores.
The legislation also gives the government powers to act against intermediaries hosting infringing content, by notifying them under Section 79(3) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and compelling takedowns and blocking actions. Under Section 79(3)(b), intermediaries are legally required to remove or disable access to unlawful content upon receiving government notice or court orders. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, add a further layer of obligation, requiring platforms to ensure their services are not used to host or distribute content that violates copyright or proprietary rights.
To put enforcement into practice, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has established a dedicated institutional mechanism, complete with nodal officers to receive complaints. Copyright holders, authorised representatives or individuals can report piracy through a prescribed format, after which the government issues notices to intermediaries to disable access to infringing links.
The most headline-grabbing action came on 11 March 2026, when Telegram was formally notified under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act and directed to remove and disable 3,142 channels found to be distributing unauthorised content belonging to OTT platforms, content owners and producers. The complaints that triggered the action came from OTT platforms including JioCinema and Amazon Prime Video, which alleged that copyrighted films, web series and other material were being shared on the platform on a massive scale. Telegram’s architecture, with its large file-sharing limits and capacity for user anonymity, has made it a favoured vehicle for exactly this kind of large-scale piracy.
The Telegram action sits within a broader pattern of escalating enforcement. Just days before the Lok Sabha statement, the ministry banned five OTT platforms for streaming obscene content: MoodXVIP, Koyal Playpro, Digi Movieplex, Feel and Jugnu. In July 2025, the Centre ordered the blocking of 25 OTT platforms accused of streaming obscene, vulgar or pornographic material, a list that included ALTT, ULLU, Big Shots App, Desiflix, Boomex, Navarasa Lite, Gulab App, Kangan App, Bull App, Jalva App, ShowHit, Wow Entertainment, Look Entertainment, Hitprime, Feneo, ShowX, Sol Talkies, Adda TV, HotX VIP, Hulchul App, MoodX, NeonX VIP, Fugi, Mojflix and Triflicks.
Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, provides the regulatory hook for those actions, prohibiting platforms from hosting content that is obscene, pornographic, invasive of privacy, gender-harassing, racially or ethnically objectionable, or that promotes hatred and violence.
For an industry that loses billions of rupees annually to piracy, the direction of travel is welcome. The question, as always, is not whether the laws exist, but whether the enforcement machinery can keep pace with the ingenuity of those determined to circumvent it. Three thousand channels down, and the pirates are already busy opening three thousand more.
