Pakistan enforces complete ban on Indian TV contents from Friday

ISLAMABAD: Amid Indo-Pak tension, Pakistan's media regulatory authority today decided to enforce a complete ban on Indian TV and radio contents from Friday and warned that the licences of those found guilty of violating the ban will be suspended. Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) decided to ban airing of Indian content from October 21 at the request of the federal government, it said. "The ban will come into effect at 3 PM on October 21, and radio and television stations which violate the ban will have their licences suspended without a prior show cause notice," PEMRA said in a statement. The ban extends to all Indian content on cable and radio being aired in Pakistan. The authority also decided to cancel one-sided rights given to Indian media by the government of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf in 2006. PEMRA has already decided to get tough with Indian contents after complaints that most of the local channels were using more than five per cent foreign contents as allowed by it. The regulator on August 31 said that strict action would be taken against the channels airing foreign content more than the prescribed limit and traders selling illegal DTH sets. The decision was implemented from October 16 as PEMRA launched crackdown on those channels using foreign contents illegally. Earlier in October, PEMRA granted its chairman Absar Alam final authority to revoke or suspend licences of companies illegally using Indian content. Tensions have ran high between India and Pakistan since the terror attack on an Indian army base in Uri on September 18. Later, India said it carried out "surgical strikes" across LoC and destroyed terrorist launchpads on September 28. Pakistan has denied any surgical strikes took place, but said two of their soldiers were killed in cross-border firing by Indian Army