Malayalam news channel MediaOne abruptly went off the air on Monday after the Union information and broadcasting ministry revoked its permission but Kerala High Court granted an interim two-day stay and the channel resumed its telecast in the evening after a freeze that had crossed six hours.

The I&B ministry said the channel’s broadcasting permission had not been renewed as the Union home ministry had denied security clearance, but it did not cite the reason why the approval had been blocked.

The channel, which extensively covers minority issues, criticises the RSS and is popular among Malayalis in the Gulf, was banned in 2020 for its coverage of the Delhi riots but the action was lifted after a few hours.

On Monday at 12.43pm, MediaOne went off the air after a brief broadcast by its editor Pramod Raman.

The high court directed additional solicitor-general of India S. Manu to get back with detailed instructions when the matter is taken up on Wednesday, advocate Rakesh K, who filed the plea, told The Telegraph.

When the ASGI objected to the interim stay, Justice N. Nagaresh observed that the broadcast should not be interrupted until the case had been decided, the lawyer said.

In his broadcast, Raman said the information and broadcasting ministry had cited “security reasons” to pull the plug on the channel.

“MediaOne channel telecast has once again been disallowed by the ministry of information and broadcasting, citing security reasons. The government has not been forthcoming with the details. MediaOne is taking urgent legal steps for the restoration of the channel, and hope to get back to the viewers soon. For the time being, we are suspending our telecast, confident that justice will prevail,” Raman said before going off the air.

After the court granted the stay, telecast resumed at 7.15pm.

Raman, who read the first live telecast of a news bulletin by a private channel in India in 1995 when he was with Asianet, later told The Telegraph that MediaOne had applied for licence renewal in May last year, well ahead of the due date of September 30. The channel was granted a 10-year licence in 2011.

“Since it is a time-consuming procedure, we were not perturbed when the renewal did not come through even after September,” Raman said.

“We received a showcase notice from the ministry on January 5 asking us ‘why the permission granted should not be revoked or cancelled for uplinking and downlinking of the above-mentioned channel’,” Raman said quoting the notice.

“In the notice that we received (today), our response was quoted as such: ‘In the reply the company has inter alia mentioned that they are unaware of the grounds for denial of security clearance and requested not to initiate any further proceedings in the matter’,” he said, adding that the channel had neither violated any norm nor received any complaints about its content.

In its order on Monday, the information and broadcasting ministry said it had examined the response of Madhyamam Broadcasting Limited to the showcause notice before taking the action.

“The reply of the company has been examined. The security clearance is based on security parameters of the ministry of home affairs. Since the ministry of home affairs has denied the security clearance, the channel cannot be allowed to operate,” said the order, signed by undersecretary Vijay Kaushik.

The ministry attributed its decision of revoking permission to the channel to the home ministry’s denial of security clearance. “In view of the above, the permission granted to M/s Madhyamam Broadcasting Limited (which owns the channel) to uplink and downlink a news and current affairs TV channel, namely MediaOne, is revoked with immediate effect and accordingly the name of this channel is removed from the list of permitted channels.”

The ministry instructed Planetcast Media Services Ltd, a Noida-based teleport operator, to stop uplinking the channel and submit a report within 24 hours.

Lok Sabha member E.T. Mohammed Basheer of the Indian Union Muslim League termed the move “highly reprehensible”.

“The Centre’s ban on MediaOne TV is highly reprehensible. This is the second time the central government has imposed a ban on MediaOne TV. Yet another attempt to silence the political dissent through outright fascism. All people of India should unite against this tyranny,” said Basheer, whose party is a member of the Congress-led United Democratic Front.