DTH
IBF chairman disagrees with fellow members on CAS rollout demands
MUMBAI: IBF members received a bit of a jolt on 23 April. Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati CEO and IBF chairman K S Sarma – the one player likely to be least affected by the CAS transition – said that he was not in favour of reducing the number of cities in which CAS has to roll out from four to one.
Sarma also disagreed that the number of channels in the free to air basic tier should be unlimited. He pointblank asserted that the FTA channel number should left to the task force to decide.
His dissenting voice comes even as members of the IBF – who run pay TV subscription channels and whose advertising revenue could plunge following the reduction in the number of viewing homes courtesy CAS – have been demanding that conditional access should be rolled out in a phased manner, first in one city and then gradually to the remaining three, as mandated by the government.
Sarma’s stand on the FTA issue has also come as a setback for free to air broadcasters such as Sahara TV and Sabe TV which have expressed the view that there should be no limit on the number of free channels in the basic tier. Their fear is that cable TV operators may arm twist them into paying fees for carriage.
DTH Operator
JC Flowers withdraws NCLT plea against Dish TV over EGM demand
Move eases pressure on DTH firm as long-running shareholder dispute cools
MUMBAI: In a breather for Dish TV India, JC Flowers Asset Reconstruction has withdrawn its petition before the National Company Law Tribunal seeking directions to convene an extraordinary general meeting.
The development was disclosed by Dish TV in a regulatory filing, confirming that the petitioner chose to withdraw the case during a hearing at the Mumbai bench of the tribunal. A detailed order from the bench is still awaited.
The petition, originally filed under Sections 98 to 100 of the Companies Act, 2013, sought to push for an extraordinary general meeting to address governance issues at the company. The case had its roots in a prolonged shareholder tussle dating back to 2021, when Yes Bank, then the largest shareholder, was at odds with the promoter group led by Subhash Chandra over board reconstitution.
JC Flowers had stepped into the picture as an assignee of Yes Bank’s stressed assets, effectively continuing the legal push initiated earlier. The withdrawal now signals a pause, if not a closure, to that chapter of dispute.
While the reasons behind the withdrawal have not been formally detailed, the move reduces immediate legal pressure on Dish TV, which has been navigating both operational and regulatory challenges in recent years.
For now, the focus shifts back to the company’s business fundamentals, even as the legal dust settles, at least temporarily, on one of its more closely watched shareholder battles.
