The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday called for report and comments from Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) seeking cancellation of notice issued to the petitioner's private radio FM-103 for April 14. The court inclined to suspend the operation of FM-103, however, restrained the petitioner from re-broadcasting the BBC Urdu Service bulletins meanwhile. The petition filed by Mohammad Imran submitted that he was running a radio channel FM 103 and was re-broadcasting the BBC Urdu programmes.
He submitted that the Pemra has issued him a notice to completely stop re-broadcasting of bulletins of the BBC Urdu Service over its network by April 2, 2005, failing which, its licences for Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan shall stand automatically cancelled/revoked.
He contended that in case the petitioner is not allowed to re-broadcast the BBC Urdu Service, it will result in major loss of revenue and total closure of the FM radio station as the BBC Urdu Service was the major source of income of the petitioner.
He prayed the court to set aside the notice issued by the respondent and allow him to re-broadcast the service of BBC Urdu.