MUMBAI: BARC India , the TV ratings agency, and Kerala TV Federation (KTF) today filed a police complaint with the Director General of Kerala police against couple of channels, which tried to temper with the BARC panel homes.The complaint was filed after the rating agency’s vigilance team received constant complaints regarding attempts to retrieve addresses of the panel homes and influencing them. The vigilance team has gathered “conclusive evidence” of more than one effort to tamper with BARC India’s television viewership measurement system in favour of a couple of channels, the agency said in a statement.“Preliminary scrutiny by on-ground vigilance team has confirmed that attempts have been made by some individuals to not only find out addresses of BARC India panel homes, but also to incentivise them and influence their viewership,” the statement reads.Incidentally, this is not the first time that BARC panel homes have been targeted to influence ratings. Earlier in March, BARC had sent a show-cause notice to South Indian broadcaster Raj Television Network for allegedly bribing panel homes to increase the viewership of Raj TV.“TV industry trades on the currency released by BARC India and we understand how important every rating point is to the broadcaster. We have evidence of a couple of broadcasters trying to tamper with our panel homes to improve ratings. We have taken steps to quarantine the affected panel homes. While we have filed a complaint this time, we want the industry to be aware that going forward BARC India will stop publishing ratings for those channels found involved in such activities,” said Partho Dasgupta, CEO BARC India.BARC installs their BAR-o-meter in these panel homes, which record all the viewership data. While BARC claims that these meters are temper proof, ratings of a channel may see a spike in case viewers keep playing the same channel.BARC said that these acts of the suspects are a cause of concern and are causing financial loss and loss of reputation.While BARC India has quarantined the impacted panel homes from its TV viewership measurement system, to ensure efforts at infiltration don’t impact ratings of channels operating in the region, it said that the Kerala Police will investigate the matter further.