Operator, there's a minister on my Idiot box

NEW DELHI: Now it's the turn of cable TV operators to demand resignation of Information and Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Prasad, who was promoted for the good work he had done in earlier ministries, has turned out to be one of the lousiest ministers in the Vajpayee government. And Conditional Access System or CAS is what has him confused and clueless.

He will complete a year in the ministry and not even God knows what he has on his mind, since all he has done is the job of a Misinformation Minister Narrowcasting his ministry's responsibilities according to political temperature.

His latest victims are TV viewers in South Delhi. They have no idea whether to buy the set-top box necessary in CAS regime or wait till Prasad figures its future.

Cable operators, who may be his next victim, are threatening to knock at the court's door if Prasad uses an ordinance to scrap the system. He needs an ordinance because CAS was implemented in South Delhi only after the Delhi High Court ordered so.

Cable operators who have spent about Rs 500 crore on buying set-top boxes say they can't bear the brunt of V.K. Malhotra's grunts. Malhotra, a member of Prasad party BJP, is the member of Parliament from South Delhi. Next elections are well not very far, as Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has indicated. He is twisting Prasad's little arms to scrap, lest it should fail and dent his vote bank.

Cable operators say if CAS is withdrawn, the cable bill in South Delhi is going to cross the dreadful Rs 600 mark. They blame both the government (for inaction) and the broadcasters (for hiking rates all the time).

Hathway, Siticable and other independent cable operators' unions say Ravi Shankar Prasad's utterings about scrapping CAS is a scam, a "reverse scam".

Roop Sharma, president of a cable group, said the government was favouring broadcasters, by not setting up a regulator (Interim broadcast regulator soon
), who can determine individual and bouquet prices for pay channels and check advertising.

That the I&B ministry has no clue in hell was clear from their "dissatisfaction" with the field report submitted by the Delhi government. The ministry had asked the state government to file a report on how CAS was being implemented in South Delhi. It hoped that a negative report would provide enough excuse for an ordinance to override the court order.

Cable operator Vikki Chaudhary is pissed about the government's inaction towards broadcasters. He said the government was doing nothing about what he termed as "predatory pricing" by pay channels. This forces consumers to buy the entire bouquet, which is just a tad costlier than one channel.

Chaudhary advised against buying a set-top box. Not yet. "Let broadcasters realise their fault and soon several pay channels will become free to air, like it happened in Chennai," he said. But who'll tell that to Prasad? But who'll tell that to Malhotra?