Slow spin, too many turns

How does the telecast of cricket matches, however much the public may be interested in it, qualify to be treated as public interest in a court of law? Remember, nobody made an issue of the telecast of the recent and no less memorable Australia series even though it was available only to the viewers of cable TV channel ESPN. Why is an opportunity loss of Doordarshan being camouflaged as public interest? Why should the apex court allow Doordarshan to use its monopoly over terrestrial television as a justification to ride roughshod over the high-value contractual rights of Ten Sports for the Pakistan series? What is the signal the government and the Supreme Court are sending out by interfering with a legally enforceable agreement signed abroad by two foreign entities?

To be fair, the Supreme Court came into the picture only because Ten Sports approached it on the eve of the first one-day match at Karachi. But then Ten Sports was forced to do so because the Madras and Bombay High Courts had entertained PILs which wanted the Pakistan series to be shown on Doordarshan as well to let more people see it.

Logically, the apex court should have immediately overturned the high courts8217; interim orders. The public interest argument is, on the face of it, laughable. If the exclusive telecast rights of a film awards function or a rock concert are sold by the organiser to any private channel, can you urge the court to junk the contract in public interest and let the event be shown on the more widely accessible Doordarshan. Even otherwise, the public interest claim cuts both ways. In the lakhs of households in the country not covered by the cable TV network, there might be a lot of parents who would have been relieved if the Supreme Court spared their children the distraction of cricket in the examination season.

In the event, the Supreme Court, far from seeing through the government8217;s public interest argument, extracted an undertaking from Ten Sports to provide a one-time live feed for the Karachi contest. Three days later, the one-time exception was extended to the second match in Rawalpindi. This despite the mischief played by Doordarshan during the first match when it blocked the logo of Ten Sports and earned Rs 10 crore by replacing the foreign channel8217;s advertisements with its own.

After the second match, the Supreme Court would have performed a hat trick a sorts if it again ordered a one-time telecast on Doordarshan for the third match. In a bid to avoid that embarrassment, the court adjourned the case till April 15 and ordered that the same arrangement would continue for all the matches taking place in the interregnum. The only consolation for Ten Sports is that the court promised a monetary compensation for the judicially sanctioned breach of its contractual rights.

The predicament Ten Sports finds itself in can be traced to a controversial verdict the Supreme Court passed in 1995 on the telecast rights the Cricket Association of Bengal CAB sold to TWI, a foreign agency, for the Hero Cup. It8217;s a judgement riddled with contradictions. On the one hand, it laid down that the organiser of any event, including a cricket tournament like the Hero Cup, has a right to sell the telecasting rights of the event to any agency, national or foreign. But on the other hand, it upheld a high court decision forcing CAB, despite its contract with TWI, to make Doordarshan the host broadcaster for telecasting in India. The 1995 verdict also set a bad precedent by holding that the telecasting of cricket matches was 8216;8216;for the benefit of the society at large8217;8217; and 8216;8216;in the public interest8217;8217;. It is a pity that the bench headed by Chief Justice V.N. Khare has so far been following a judgement that actually needs to be overruled.