Mukesh Ambani, the promoter-cum-chairman-and-managing director of Reliance Industries (RIL), appears to be excessively intolerant towards any severe criticisms made against RIL and media's airing of it.
If the below report is true, then it appears he and RIL has threatened TV media with defamation suits for airing Arvind Kejriwal's statements on him and RIL last month.
I wonder whether all of RIL's non-promoter shareholders who own 55 per cent of RIL will agree to such intolerance. Yes, it is fair for a company to defend itself against false accusations but Kejriwal's serious allegations do not cross the limits which should invite a legal action. As a shareholder of a company, I would never approve it resorting to threatening legal action against the media. If it does, it will only make me sell its shares because a free media is a must for a vibrant democracy and a honest company should have the courage to take the severest criticisms in its stride without fear of a loss of reputation.
Here is the report which provides details on the legal action threat by Mukesh Ambani and RIL and if this report is true then it is a threat to India's democracy by one of its few largest corporate conglomerates:
http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/mukesh-ambani-sues-tv-channels-on-kejriwal/
Mukesh Ambani ‘sues’ TV channels on Kejriwal
10 January 2013SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and India’s most powerful business house, Reliance Industries, are believed to have served a legal notice on several TV news channels for airing anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal‘s allegations against them in October and November last year.
However, it is not known if Kejriwal, a former IRS officer, and his advocate-partner, Prashant Bhushan, have heard from RIL’s lawyers on the charges made by them at the press conferences which were covered “live” by the TV channels with accompanying commentary.
It is also unclear if newspapers which reported Kejriwal’s allegations of Ambani’s Swiss bank accounts and hanky-panky in the Krishna-Godavari basin by RIL have attracted similar legal attention from the less-litigious of the two Ambani brothers.
In the seven-page legal notice shot off in the middle of December 2012, Mukesh Ambani and RIL have demanded “a retraction and an unconditional apology in the form approved and acceptable to our clients” within three days from the receipt of the notice.
The notices have been served by the Bombay legal firm, A.S. Dayal & Associates.
***
Besides accusing the channels of “deliberately and recklessly” airing “false and defamatory statements” with an intent to “defame our clients and bring them into disrepute”, the legal notice makes the following points:
# “Your TV Channel provided a platform and instrumentality for wide dissemination of the false and defamatory statements and allegations made at the said press conference.”***
# “Live telecast of these press conferences amounts to permanent publication of defamatory material relating to our client by you.”
# “Each of the two press conferences were telecast live without making any attempt to verify the truth or veracity of the statements and allegations being made during the press conference.”
# “Apart from having telecast the press conferences live, Your TV Channel in the course of several television programmes and televised debates that followed after the said press conferences, continued to telecast, transmit and retransmit the defamatory footage of the press conferences.”
More ominously, the Ambani-RIL notice reminds the channels:
# “Our clients have instructed us to state that Your TV Channel is bound by the Guidelines for Uplinking and Downlinking from India dated 5th December 2011, issued by the ministry of information & broadcasting, government of India.***
# “Our clients have instructed us to state that since Your TV Channel is a news and current affairs TV Channel, the provisions of the Uplinking and Downlinking Guidelines apply to Your TV Channel, which inter alia provide that a Company, like Your TV Channel, which runs a news and current affairs TV channel, is obliged to comply with the Programme Code as laid down in the Cable Television Network (Regulations) Act, 1995, and the Rules framed thereunder.
# “Our clients have instructed us to state that in telecasting the aforesaid press conferences and repeating the false and defamatory material relating to our clients in the manner aforesaid Your TV Channel is in complete violation of the said Uplinking Guidelines, and the said Downlinking Guidelines as also in complete and material breach of the Programme Code prescribed under the Cable Television Network Rules.”
The RIL legal notice brings to question the wisdom of broadcasting “live” Kejriwal’s near-weekly press conferences towards the end of last year, sans any filters or fetters.
On the other hand, the authoritarian tone of the legal notice—reminding the recipients of uplinking and downlinking norms—throws light on the egg-shells on which private TV stations are walking in the “free” Republic.
The legal notice also swings the spotlight on big business ownership of and shadow over the media, especially when it is alleged to have both the main political parties, the Congress and BJP, in its pocket.
For the record, RIL is in the media business too. Both CNN-IBN and IBN7 are part of the Reliance stable following a controversial and circuitous takeover at the turn of 2012 that now has earned the OK of the competition commission of India (CCI).
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