Ten Sports has been asked to explain why it isn’t sharing live feeds of the ongoing India-Sri Lanka ODI series with Prasar Bharti, or face a ban on the telecast of the fourth match of the series on Tuesday.

The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the sports broadcaster to show cause as to “why this Court, in these circumstances be not pleased to prohibit them from telecasting the ODI match scheduled for tomorrow unless they share the live signals with Prasar Bharti”.

“It is common ground that the One Day International series being played at Sri Lanka is a national sporting event and its availability on Doordarshan is in public interest for the large number of viewers and masses in the India,” observed a Division Bench led by Justice Manmohan Sarin in the hearing today.

As per Section 3 of the Sports Broadcasting Signal (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharti) Act, 2007, any broadcaster licensed to air sports events of national importance should “mandatorily” share live feeds with Doordarshan. A notification to this effect had been issued by the government on October 3, 2007.

The court order comes on an application filed by a fan Ravi Dev Gupta before the Bench that Doordarshan had not telecast live the first and second ODIs on its terrestrial and Direct to Home (DTH) networks despite clear “statutory provisions”.

Appearing for the government, Additional Solicitor General PP Malhotra said nothing meaningful would come out of the case unless there was proper representation from Ten Sports, following which the court impleaded the broadcaster as a party.