I&B Ministry green lights Sudarshan TV show on 'Muslims infiltrating bureaucracy'

new delhi: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Thursday allowed Sudarshan News and its Editor-in-chief Suresh Chavhanke to go ahead with the broadcast of a show claiming "Muslims were infiltrating the country's bureaucracy", which had earlier been stayed by the Delhi High Court.

While the high court had temporarily stayed the broadcast of the show on August 28, Chavhanke challenged the order, following which the court had asked the Centre to decide the matter after the channel responded to its notice. The show had, till that time, been stayed from being aired.

However, according to the order issued by the I&B Ministry in this regard, the channel has been allowed to go ahead with the show after it submitted an "undertaking" that the show does not violate any programme codes and that if it did, it would be prepared to face legal action.

Significantly, the show's promo, which was aired on television and publicised on social media showed Chavhanke teasing his show "Bindass Bol", where he questions why "Muslims have suddenly started doing well in the civil services examinations". He also claimed that Muslims were passing the exams in large numbers and were "infiltrating the civil services". He goes on to ask his viewers, "How would you feel if a jihadi from Jamia becomes your next local official?"

Despite the contents of the promo, based on which the Ministry had received multiple complaints and issued the notice to the channel, Chavhanke's outfit did not address it in its reply to the government and neither did the ministry question it. As for the channel's reply, it said that the Ministry cannot haul it up for a promo publicised on social media, to which the government said it was aired on television as well.

Moreover, Sudarshan TV went on to question whether there is a practice to issue a notice to a channel for a show's promo before it is aired. It went on to say that action can be taken after the broadcast if it violates any law and called the Ministry's notice "an attempt to do pre-censorship" of his show. This is when the channel submitted an undertaking that the show is not violative of any law.

The Ministry, however, while noting that it has powers to issue a notice if it believes a programme violates the law cited the channel's undertaking and gave the green light for the show, saying, "The channel is hereby directed to ensure that the programme proposed to be telecast does not violate any of the programme codes. If any violation of the programme code is found, action as per law will be taken."

After the promotional video put out by Chavhanke on his Twitter went viral last month, several senior bureaucrats - both serving and retired had called it out for "hate speech". In fact, both the IAS Association and the IPS Association had strongly condemned the language and content of the promo.