Assembly Speaker M. Appavu is of the opinion that the ‘zero hour’ of the Assembly sessions cannot be telecast live unless all party leaders give an assurance that only the subject concerned would be discussed on the floor of the House, the Madras High Court was informed on Wednesday.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu, Advocate-General R. Shunmugasundaram said, “The problem with the zero hour is that sometimes, tempers run high, and members may end up making unwarranted comments that could be expunged by the Speaker.”
The A-G also submitted an additional counter-affidavit filed by Assembly Secretary K. Srinivasan, who noted that the Speaker had said that the zero hour could not be telecast live, and that it required an assurance from all party leaders in the light of Rule 119 of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Rules.
It was brought to the notice of the court that Rule 119 authorises the Speaker to expunge certain words from the proceedings of the House, if he was of the opinion that they were defamatory, indecent, unparliamentary or undignified, or that incriminatory charges had been levelled against any member without the Speaker’s permission.
Noting that it was the prerogative of the Speaker to take a call on live telecast, Mr. Srinivasan said that from January 6, 2022, the first hour of the Assembly session, termed ‘question hour’, was being telecast live in its entirety, and from April 12, 2023, the discussion on the ‘call attention’ motions and important resolutions were also being telecast live.
“Apart from live telecast on the above mentioned subjects, almost all items of business as approved by the honourable Speaker are covered in the edited video of the proceedings supplied to television channels on the same day within a few hours, and it is also telecast through social media viz. YouTube, Twitter and Facebook,” the Secretary added.
He told the court that the edited video footage, supplied to the television channels, contained excerpts of the speeches of leaders and members of all legislature parties, including the Opposition, who take part in the debate, and therefore, it was wrong to claim that the speeches of Opposition leaders were being intentionally edited out.
DOORDARSHAN EXPRESSED INABILITY
The counter-affidavit went on to state that the Speaker had ordered that Doordarshan Podhigai, the national broadcaster, should be assigned the task of telecasting live the Assembly proceedings produced by Tamil Nadu Films Division. Accordingly, DD Podhigai telecast the proceedings between January and May 2022.
The television channel was paid ₹44.65 lakh for the live telecast by the State exchequer, and it also began the process of laying optical fibre cable to enable smooth telecast of the proceedings in coordination with the Information and Public Relations Department. DD informed the Assembly Secretariat that it was awaiting sanction of funds from the Centre. “Later, Doordarshan expressed its inability to telecast the proceedings of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly,” the counter read.
It was filed in response to writ petitions filed by Lok Satta Party State president D. Jagadheeswaran in 2012 and DMDK leader Vijayakant in 2015, insisting on live telecast of the Assembly proceedings. AIADMK chief whip and former Minister S.P. Velumani had also filed an impleading petition, complaining of selective telecasting.
Senior Counsel Vijay Narayan, representing Mr. Velumani, told the court that his client had decided to file a fresh writ petition instead of getting impleaded in the existing petitions, and sought a short adjournment for the listing of the new case. The judges accepted his request and directed the Registry to list all cases together on August 22.
Earlier, the A-G said, “If the former Minister wants to get impleaded, I welcome him. I can show that during his period, he did nothing to get the Assembly proceedings telecast live.”
