Prasar Bharati: HC tells Lalli to comply with Board order

The stand-off between Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer B S Lalli and his senior officers reached a turning point when the Delhi High Court on Friday cautioned Lalli to comply with the decisions of the Board and directed the public broadcaster to videotape the minutes of the meetings to ensure transparency. We want to resolve hellip;

The stand-off between Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer B S Lalli and his senior officers reached a turning point when the Delhi High Court on Friday cautioned Lalli to comply with the decisions of the Board and directed the public broadcaster to videotape the minutes of the meetings to ensure transparency.

We want to resolve this dispute in accordance with the law. The Chief Executive Officer Lalli will only act in accordance with the decisions of the Board as per Section 5 of the Prasar Bharati Act, ordered a division Bench of Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice N K Kaul.

Section 5 states that the Board shall control and supervise the powers and functions of the Chief Executive officer CEO,and the latter shall only exercise those functions which the Board may delegate to him.

Senior advocate Jayant Bhushan,representing NGO Central Public Interest Litigation which moved court against the alleged mismanagement and irregularities in Prasar Bharati,sought an order from the court to appoint a retired senior judge of a high court to sit as an observer in the Board meetings to ensure transparent recording of the minutes.

The court accepted Bhushans argument at face value,but instead decided to videotape the Board proceedings amidst protests raised by Additional Solicitor General Parag Tripathi appearing for the public broadcaster.

We cannot have X,Y or Z sitting in our Board meetings, Tripathi resisted the proposal,adding that meetings were already audio-recorded for future reference.

But the Bench chose to remain firm and ordered that Board meetings should be video recorded and a meeting should be convened in the next four weeks. Chief Justice Shah highlighted the need for holding a meeting before the next hearing of the case in court on July 15.

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The order flies in the face of a 43-page affidavit filed by Lalli in which he disagreed with a proposal to shift power to other members of the Board,arguing that the functioning of the broadcast corporation could be solely through the CEO as per the law.

The proposal to give powers to Member Personnel and Member Finance is contrary to the scheme of the Act. The Act contemplates functioning of Prasar Bharati would be through the Chief Executive Officer, Lalli stated.

The state of affairs in the public broadcaster was brought to light in the previous high court hearing when the Bench was informed that Prasar Bharati chairman Arun Bhatnagar had resigned. In his resignation letter,he stated that it has become increasingly difficult for me to address proper functioning of the Board.

But Lallis affidavit squarely blamed Bhatnagar for unauthorisedly recording the minutes of the January 21,2009 Board meeting relying only on his memory and without reference to the audio tapes,in complete disregard to the past practice. Terming the dispute an orchestrated campaign against him,the CEO complained that the dispute started after his term was extended to 2011 on the passing of an amendment to the Prasar Bharati Act in 2008.