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Union of India v. Board of Control for Cricket in India and connected matters

Civil Appeal · 2017 INSC 786Decided 22 Aug 2017
Civil Appeal Nos. 10732-10733 of 2017, Civil Appeal Nos. 10734-10735 of 2017, Civil Appeal Nos. 10736-10737 of 2017, Civil Appeal Nos. 10738-10739 of 2017
Justice Ranjan Gogoi · Justice Navin Sinha

Background

Under Section 3 of the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007, private broadcasters holding cricket telecast rights (Star India and ESPN, under rights granted by BCCI) are required to share the live signal of nationally important cricket matches with Prasar Bharati/Doordarshan, so it can be shown on Doordarshan's own terrestrial and Direct-to-Home networks. BCCI's position (taken originally in Delhi High Court writ petitions) was that this sharing obligation should not be read to let ordinary cable TV operators, who are separately required under Section 8 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 to mandatorily carry the Doordarshan channel DD1 (National), pick up the cricket signal relayed on that channel and pass it free to their own millions of paying subscribers, bypassing BCCI's dedicated commercial sports-channel arrangement entirely. The Delhi High Court's Division Bench had already ruled in BCCI's favour on this point, and it was the Union of India, Prasar Bharati, and allied cable-interest appellants who brought the present appeals to the Supreme Court challenging that ruling.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the 2007 Sports Act operates independently and is not controlled or expanded by Section 8 of the Cable Act: the obligation to share the signal with Prasar Bharati exists only so Prasar Bharati itself can re-transmit it on its own terrestrial and DTH networks, not so that cable operators could piggyback on that signal via the coincidental fact that DD1 National happens to be a mandatorily-carried channel. The Court reasoned that reading the two statutes together the way the appellants urged would let a quirk of channel-notification policy override the actual commercial broadcasting-rights scheme, and that the two laws would otherwise sit in tension. It clarified that nothing in its ruling affected Prasar Bharati's own separate rights under Section 12(3)(c) of the Prasar Bharati Act. On this basis, all the appeals (brought by the Union of India, Prasar Bharati, and the cable/DTH-aligned appellants) were dismissed, and the Delhi High Court's 2015 judgment, which had upheld BCCI's narrower, commercially protective reading, was affirmed.

Lesson Learnt

A legal obligation created for one specific purpose (here, giving the public broadcaster access to nationally important sports signals) is not automatically expanded by an unrelated regulatory requirement (mandatory cable carriage of a particular channel): courts will read special-purpose legislation on its own terms rather than letting it be stretched by coincidental overlaps with other laws.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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