The former CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, Partho Dasgupta said that he has received US$12,000 from Arnab Goswami, the Editor-in-Chief of Republic TV for two separate holidays and a total of Rs 40 lakh for manipulating ratings in favour of the news channel.
According to reports, the 3,600-page supplementary charge sheet, filed by Mumbai Police also includes names several news channels, including Republic, Times Now and Aaj Tak, and lists instances of alleged manipulation as well as “pre-fixing” of ratings for the channels by BARC’s top executives.
Meanwhile, Goswami’s Republic TV also dodged an auction process which requires channels to shell out Rs 8-12 crore yearly as carriage fees for a slot. His news channel was broadcast for over two years in an unencrypted form on a bandwidth accessible to all users of the FreeDish service.
