Here is why NDTV, ABP and Aaj Tak got a govt. notice over Yakub hanging

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If you thought that TV channels had gone overboard in urging for mercy for 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon before his eventual hanging, you have found a friend in the NDA government.

A report in The Indian Express mentions that the Union Information and Broadcasting ministry has issued show-cause notices to three TV channels for showing content which showed disrespect to the President of India and the judiciary.

The channels which have been served are ABP News, NDTV 24×7 and Aaj Tak.

Aaj Tak and ABP News are in the firing line for running a phone-in with gangster Chhota Shakeel. In the interviews, Shakeel claims that Memon is innocent and that his four mercy petitions had been rejected in a single day and alleges that justice was not carried out in Memon’s case.

Here is the link to the ABP news article.

The Aaj Tak phone-in transcript can be found in full here and the interview was also run by its English sister channel India Today.

English news channel NDTV has come under the scanner for running an interview with Memon’s lawyer who cited the revocation of the death penalty in several western countries as a reason to spare his client.

Here is the NDTV debate.

The report mentions that the show-cause notices issued to the three channels cites the breach of three sections of the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994.

According to Section 1(d), no programme which contains any “obscene, defamatory, deliberate, false and suggestive innuendos and half-truths” should find itself on air.

Section 1(e) mentions that cable channels should not air anything which is “likely to encourage or incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order or which promote anti-national attitudes.”

And finally, under Section 1(g), channels cannot air content which “contains aspersions against the integrity of the President and Judiciary”.

Rise of fraud TV babas, sadhvis and quacks is an awful scourge. That's what I&B shd worry about, not try bullying news media & look idiotic — Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) August 8, 2015

Memon was hanged early on July 30 and his execution brought up the debate surrounding the death penalty again.