ED's chargesheet exposes irregularities of Times Now and India Today, no evidence against Republic
The Enforcement Directorate has filed a chargesheet in a case involving manipulation of Television Rating Points. A few days back sources in the agency told news agency Press Trust of India, that there is no evidence against Republic TV, Republic Bharat. The channels from Republic Media Network were accused of TRP Manipulation by Mumbai Police.
In the ED Chargesheet, two news channels have been named to have been committed manipulation of TRPs. ED has named news channels India Today TV and Times Now to have manipulated TRPs.
News Tap Global has accessed athe EXCLUSIVE ED Chargesheet.
INDIA TODAY
The chargesheet says that the agency came across households who were asked to watch India Today TV in lieu of money from RMs.
Deputy General Manager of Hansa Research told ED that their employee had admitted to have received a phone call from one named Vinay to convince 5 households to watch India Today TV by offering them Rs 200 per month. The Hansa employee had received Rs 5000 as a commission. This happened from November 2019 to May 2020.
TIMES NOW
Times Now is mentioned over 101 times. Head of Vigilance and Investigations of BARC told ED that, it had started a field investigation against Times Now in July 2017. In the course of the Field Investigation it had found out that Times Now had approached few households to watch their channel. BARC had then issued a show cause notice to Times Now. Times Now was in denial to have committed such an activity. Representatives from Times Now visited BARC office, were shown the raw data which indicated an abnormal spike in the ratings of Times Now. The channel repsentatives were shown videos of Households alleging that certain Individual approached them and asked them to watch Times Now.
Enforcement Directorate had got in a third party auditor, to audit data and the investigation done by ED.
1. TIMES NOW claimed Republic TV hand in hand with BARC reduced TRPs of Time Now to keep Republic number 1.
The audit report has exposed this claim. The audit inference clearly states, “The analysis of emails of
BARC officials, SOP of BARC, Statements of BARC officials taken by ED and iMessage conversations of BARC officials, does not inter alia refer to ‘alteration of ranking of Times Now to below that of Republic TV’ based on the samples verified by us. Based on the above and to the best of our knowledge and belief, there is no indication of any intended modification of rankings, that resulted in manipulation.”
CLEAN CHIT TO REPUBLIC TV
ED in its chargesheet has clearly mentioned that there is NO evidence against Republic TV. The chargesheet also mentions that NO INVESTIGATED HOUSE HOLD saw Republic TV.
This is a developing story, and will be updated.
News Tap Global has reached out to Times Now for their side. Story will be updates once we receive their response.
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