Penalty on TV channel too harsh, says Press council chief Katju

Justice Markandey Katju, recently appointed as Press Council of India chairman, sprang something of a surprise on Wednesday when he termed as ''incorrect'' a Supreme Court order upholding a Bombay High Court verdict imposing a fine of Rs100 crore on TV channel Times Now in a defamation case.

Katju urged the Supreme Court and the high court to "reconsider" their orders that Times Now deposit the amount as a pre-condition for its appeal against a Pune court's verdict to be heard. "With great respect to these orders I am of the view that they are incorrect and require to be reconsidered," he said.

Times Now had mistakenly shown the photograph of Justice P B Sawant instead of Justice P K Samanta in connection with the Ghaziabad Provident Fund scam, for which it apologised several times.

Katju said, "The appropriate order would have been to give a severe warning to the TV channel to be careful in future. Imposition of a Rs100-crore fine was, in my respectful opinion, grossly disproportionate to the offence and the principle of proportionality that is now well-settled in our jurisprudence."

Speaking at seminar on the National Press Day, the former Supreme Court judge said, "It is true that Times Now channel made a mistake ... but from the facts it appears to be an inadvertent human error for which an apology was given several times. It does not seem that there was any malicious intent and the unintentional mistake was due to a technical mix-up. We are all human beings and we all make mistakes."