NEW DELHI: The Sun Group is moving the High Court in Delhi or Chennai on Monday to challenge the denial of the permission to Red FM to bid in Phase III of FM.

 

Sun Group Chief Financial Officer S L Narayanan told radioandmusic.com that the Group had last night received a formal communication from the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry that it would not be allowed to bid in view of pending cases against the Maran brothers.

 

He said that the Group had so far refrained from commenting as ‘we do not want to fight in the media’ but was not reacting as the Ministry had given it a cause of action for a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.

 

The list of 21 bidders which had got the go-ahead on 15 July did not contain the name of Red FM, which is a strong contender.

 

Narayanan also said that the cases against the Marans were not linked to security issues and had in any case not been concluded. Further, he said a company could not be asked to close down merely because it had some cases pending against it.

 

Expressing his gratitude to the manner in which Indian media had taken up the cause of freedom of the press on behalf of Sun, he said that no plans had been drawn up for moving the Courts on Sun TV since there was no cause for action as the government had so far failed to send any communication relating to the security clearance issue pending with the Home Ministry.

 

He was particularly grateful to Indian Broadcasting Foundation President Uday Shankar and Uday Chawla of the Association of Radio Operators in India (AROI) for writing to  Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as the Home Minister Rajnath Singh and I and B Minister Arun Jaitley.