The Supreme Court, which is looking into the controversy over the refusal of broadcasters Star, Sony and ESPN to provide their signals to the Zee-owned SitiCable's Headends-In-The-Sky platform, will take a decision on the issue on Wednesday.
The broadcasters have moved the Supreme Court against an interim order passed by the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission last week asking them to continue providing their signals to SitiCable.
The broadcasters have alleged that SitiCable is transmitting their programmes despite the fact that there are no agreements between them and the multiple-service operator.
SitiCable has contested this and submitted that there are "loads of agreements". The MSO justified MRTPC's order on the ground that the broadcasters were indulging in unfair, monopolistic and restrictive practices when the conditional access system regime was about to be launched.
A Supreme Court bench, consisting of Justice Santosh Hegde and Justice B P Singh, asked SitiCable to produce the agreements on Wednesday, when it will take a decision on whether to vacate the order passed by MRTPC.
If the order is vacated, SitiCable will not be able to receive signals from these channels.
The court also asked the disputing parties to explain what kind of an impact there will be on ordinary viewers if the MRTPC order is set aside.
P Chidambaram, the senior counsel for Star, submitted that its signals were downloaded by one of the cable distributors without permission and then uplinked to the HITS platform of SitiCable from where the programmes were distributed all over the country.
Chidambaram said the cable distributor had permission only to receive signals in his geographical location, but using the HITS platform meant that it could be used to distribute the programme everywhere.
He criticised the MRTPC order, which was passed without hearing all the affected parties. The commission could not have passed such an interim order without proper inquiry, according to earlier Supreme Court rulings, Chidambaram said.
Senior counsel Kapil Sibal, who was arguing the case for Zee, said that there were nearly hundred agreements between SitiCable and the broadcasters. Sibal contended that Star wanted to promote its own HITS platform through its subsidiary Hathway and it thus wanted to eliminate rivals like SitiCable.
Sibal said MRTPC was justified in restraining Star from indulging in unfair and restrictive trade practices. He also said the government's orders in this regard insisted that the distribution of signals should be fair and without discrimination.
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