Delhi High Court directs Centre to decide representation demanding government takeover of BARC

The Delhi High Court on Monday directed the Centre to expeditiously decide a representation seeking directions that the government take over the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) and come up with an in-house mechanism for television audience research (Veterans Forum For Transparency in Public Life v Union of India and Ors)..The directions came from a Bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh while hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a trust named Veterans Forum for Transparency in Public Life, through advocate Rabin Majumder..The petition argued that the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act was notified in March 2016 with enabling provisions for the government to bring under a compulsory certification regime any goods or article of any scheduled industry, process, system or service which it considers necessary in public interest or for the protection of human, animal or plant health, safety of the environment, or prevention of unfair trade practices, or national security.The petition added that due to the non-implementation of provisions enshrined in the BIS act, the task of developing standards for various services in field of health, education and advertisements through digital media and television audience measurement is being conducted by private parties. This overrides the activities and constitutionally-mandated duties of the BIS, ultimately leading to corruption and therefore affecting people and viewers at large, it was submitted.“BARC has become an umbrella organization creating several illegal standard setting and accreditation Boards without sanction of BIS Act 2016 and otherwise, such are job of BIS and by no other,” the petition read.It added, “Even now so many institutions and agencies are running simultaneously either taking membership of International Institutions or preparing their own standards and Manuals and earning hefty amount as fee for giving them television audience measurement service based on standard made by them or standards made by those private Respondents et al and adopted by charging annual charges and also renewal fee etc.”.The Bench was informed that a representation was preferred by the petitioner before the Central government in August, but it has not been decided. The Court therefore directed that the respondents act on the representation in accordance with laws, rules and regulations, keeping in mind the preamble of the BIS Act..The Court also gave the petitioner liberty to approach an appropriate forum if it is not satisfied with the Central government's decision.