Priyanka Singh
Published on: September 22, 2022 at 19:46 IST
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has given a clean chit to the Republic TV and R Bharat in a case alleging their involvement in the manipulation of Television Rating Point (TRP) numbers.
The chargesheet for the same was filed last week in the Special PMLA Court.
ED has not yet concluded their investigation in the case of News Nation and India Today channels.
In 2020, Editor-in chief of Republic TV, Arnab Goswami along with others from the ARG Outlier Media which owns Republic TV, were named by the Mumbai Police in their chargesheet while investigating the TRP Scam.
The ED accused sixteen entities in the case including the directors of Box Cinema, Fakt Marathi and many other Relationship Managers (RMs) associated with the Hansa Research Group, which is a contractor employed by the BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council).
Upon stating the ways of their investigation, the agency told that the raw data from the panel households (who allegedly watch Republic channels) was sought from the BARC, which denied any monetary exchange to view the channels, as claimed by ED.
ED further stated about its reliance on forensic audit that clarified the TRP calculation methodology was tampered and controls were used to favour specific channels.
The auditor negated the police reports stating them to be “superficial and based on analysis of limited aspects.”
The ED claimed there was a wider conspiracy between channel viewers, agents, and RMs to influence the panel households to watch the channels in exchange of money.
The case was registered by the Kandivali police on 6th Oct, 2020.