Mumbai: The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has issued an advisory to Star One Channel for using offensive word against one community in one of the episodes of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge-2.
The episode was telecasted on 23 June, 2006. The I&B Ministry has issued this advisory in response to a complaint that has alleged the participants of the programme, Ali Hassan and Irfan, of making a derogatory remark against a particular community.
The ministry has advised Star One Channel not to repeat this offence in future and show better self-regulation in creation of programme content. It has asked the channel to ensure strict compliance to this direction and said that any further violation may entail stringent action including taking the channel off the air.
The advisory has been issued on the recommendations of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) constituted by the Information & Broadcasting Ministry to look into the specific complaints against the violation of Programme and Advertising Codes. The complaint was examined by the IMC as to whether any violation of provisions of SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 had taken place in the telecast of the said episode. After viewing the recordings of the programme, the committee held unanimous opinion that the offensive word should not have been used by the participants. The channel should have rather exercised better restraint.
The IMC has also observed that Hassan and Irfan, though, had performed the episode as fictional characters, the said intentional utterances, however, cannot be brushed aside merely as comedy as the utterances propagate practice of untouchability, which has since been abolished under Article 17 of the Constitution of India. The Committee has further observed that even if it is presumed that the participants being foreign Nationals might have been oblivious of the implications of the utterances as fictional characters in the episode, the Channel being responsible for telecast of this programme for public viewing cannot be absolved.
