The court balanced the plaintiff's claim of defamation with the defendant's plea of freedom of speech and expression, ultimately directing the defendants to obtain the plaintiff's view and reflect it simultaneously in any program pertaining to the plaintiff or his companies, in accordance with the guidelines of the NBSA.

V.K. Shali, J.

I.A. No.5690/2014

1. This order shall dispose of an application of the plaintiff under Order 39 Rule 1 & 2 CPC for grant of pre-telecasting stay against the defendant in a suit for permanent/mandatory injunction and damages.

2. Briefly stated the facts leading to the filing of the present suit are that the plaintiff is a two-time Member of Parliament from the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha constituency in Haryana and is contesting election for the third time from the same constituency. He is the Chairman of the plaintiff No.2 company known as M/s. Jindal Steel & Power Limited. It has been stated that plaintiff No.1 is a man of myriad talents having a high sense of patriotism, commitment, responsibility, dedication, honesty, integrity, sincerity and passion in doing all his activities. He is the youngest of the four brothers and child of an industrialist and philanthropist politician, late Sh. Om Prakash Jindal and Smt. Savitri Devi Jindal. He has enumerated his various achievements in academics, public, social service and extracurricular field in the plaint in detail in order to show that he is a man of great standing in the society. His immediate grievance is that the plaintiff is having a running feud with defendant No.1, M/s. Zee Media Corporation Ltd., a company which is having its registered office at Continental Building 135, Dr. Annie Besant Road Worli, Mumbai.

3. The defendant No.1 is engaged in the business of broadcasting news and entertainment and owns several channels including Zee News, Zee Business Channel and Zee New UP which are 24x7 news channels having wide broadcasting and viewership all across India as well as abroad. The defendant No.1 is also stated to be having websites which disseminates news and views on several issues. It is alleged that total viewership of the said channels is Rs.3,54,10,000/- which comprises of 13.3% of the total viewership of all other news channel. Similarly, Zee Business is also alleged to have a viewership of Rs.1,09,50,000/-which comprises of 4.1% of all the business news channel.

4. The defendant No.2, Sameer Ahluwalia, is the Editor and Business Head of M/s. Zee Business and defendant No.3, Sudhir Chaudhary, is the Editor & Business Head of Zee News Channel while as defendant No.4, Vasindra Mishra is the Business Head of Zee Regional Television.

5. It has been alleged by the plaintiff that the officers of the Zee Media Corporation Ltd., namely, defendant No.2 and some other officers like Subhash Chandra, Chairman and Puneet Goenka, Managing Director had been in the past attempting to blackmail plaintiff No.1 on account of the alleged role of plaintiff No.1 in getting allotment of coal blocks which were under the scrutiny of the CBI. It was alleged that defendant No.1 and its officers apart from ones who are not party herein had allegedly demanded a sum of Rs.100 crores from the plaintiffs in the form of advertisement contracts and aired a false news report on the basis of a forged CAG report because of which the plaintiffs laid a trap against them and subsequent thereto, two FIRs under Sections 384/511/120-B IPC and also under Sections 466/468/469/471 read with Section 120-B IPC were got registered and are pending investigation at Delhi. It has been alleged that because of these registration of FIRs, the defendant No.1 and its office bearers, namely, defendant Nos.2 to 4 are having mala fie intentions and have unleashed a campaign of vilification on their news channel by making false, vicious and pernicious allegations with a view to defame the plaintiffs. It is alleged that these allegations were made with a view to wreck vengeance and vendetta by the defendants against the plaintiffs. It was alleged that these allegations which were aired by the defendants in their news programme between 1.3.2014 to 24.3.2014 were per se defamatory and were repeated 131 times against the plaintiffs which not only affected the sentiments of a particular community and caste but