DAS Relief?

The government should breathe a sigh of relief. The apex court has admitted a petition filed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) on transfer of all ongoing cases related to the roll-out of the third phase of digital addressable system (DAS-III) currently on across various high courts. MIB had to approach Supreme Court (SC) as the implementation of DAS-III was ballooning into a big challenge. As per MIB’s instructions, all cable homes in cities having a population of one lakh or above should have switched to DAS via a digital set-top-box before 31 December 2015. But cable operators/associations of distributors across states such as Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Kerala, West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka and Maharashtra among others got relief from their respective high courts making DAS-III roll-out virtually impossible. According to some news reports, now the SC has admitted MIB’s petition and is said to have directed the high courts to stop proceedings on matters related to DAS-III. “Final decision shall not be rendered by the high courts,” the bench said in a brief order.

It should be noted that recently the Hyderabad high court had extended DAS-III deadline in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana by four weeks. The Allahabad high court had extended the stay in Uttar Pradesh by another two months. Shortage of set-top boxes was cited as one of the issues because of which petitions were filed in courts. MIB’s efforts to implement DAS-III, however, got support from an order of the Chhattisgarh high court which clearly told the petitioners that the stay would not be extended once the period ends in March. According to the information tabled in Parliament, DAS-III has been completed in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and Andaman & Nicobar. The source of the data originated from the multi-system operators, direct-to-home service providers and the headend-in-the-sky operators. With the matter now expected to be taken up by the apex court, MIB can hope to sort out all issues pertaining to the DAS-III roll-out, thereby making digital distribution of cable channels a reality.

Seeding of set-top boxes across 18 states covered under DAS-III has been completed. Work is almost complete in another seven states, minister of state in the MIB Rajyavardhan Rathore had informed the Lok Sabha earlier in March. As per MIB data, the percentage achievement of DAS-III increased to over 90 per cent by mid-February, a jump of 24 percentage points compared to what it was at the end of 2015.