The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday dismissed a PIL seeking a ban on the TV serial Namak Ishq Ka. Further, the petitioner was allowed to go to the competent authority.
The division bench of Chief Justice Govind Mathur and Justice Ramesh Sinha passed this order while hearing a petition filed by Cultural Quest through its secretary Surbhi Singh.
The petitioner, a society, has approached this Court on the count that the TV serial above-named is being aired in violation of the provisions of Cinematograph Act, 1952 (hereinafter referred to as “Act, 1952”).
According to counsel for the petitioner, a TV serial too is a film as defined under Section 2(dd) of the Act, 1952 and, as such, the same should also be subject to censor by Censor Board established under Section 3 of the Act, 1952.
The Court said the petitioner has not made this complaint before the competent authority and hence the petition cannot be considered. At the same time, the petitioner was also allowed to move before the authority.
The bench said, in its order,
“Having considered the facts given in the Petition for writ, we are of the view that the Petitioner is seeking a writ for the nature of mandamus and a condition for it is that the person aggrieved shall be bound by the Court with such instead of bringing the writ, the authority should make a demand before the authority. In the present case no such demand has been made by the Petitioner before approaching this court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. In view of this, the Writ Petition is dismissed.”