The Bombay high court on 10th September expressed surprise that the government had no control over the electronic media. Hearing a public interest litigation filed by Pune-based advocate-activist Asim Sarode, filed in connection with the electronic media coverage of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, the court observed that the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) was “toothless”. A division bench of chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice Girish Kulkarni noted that the NBSA was not a statutory body but a voluntary body floated by the TV channels themselves.
The bench asked Asim Sarode to make the Government of India a party and directed it to file a reply in court, indicating the extent of state control it exercised on news broadcast by TV channels.