By Our Reporter
The Indian news channels which had been airing fabricated, misleading and defaming news and video were banned in Nepal.
However, it was not the government, but the operators of the private channels decided to discontinue them in Nepal.
The operators of the private channels on Thursday took the decision not to air the malicious news channels in Nepal for airing derogatory materials against Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.
The Indian channels, which have earned a bad name for airing false and unethical materials, have been undermining Nepal’s sovereignty right from the day Nepal launched its updated map. But the Indian channels argued that Nepal had done that at the instruction of China.
Later, a channel aired an objectionable video claiming that PM Oli and Chinese ambassador Hou Yanqi have an affair, which created a furore among the Nepalis with many demanding immediate bans on the Indian news channels in Nepal.
On Thursday, Minister for Communication and Information Technology Dr. Yuba Raj Khatiwada announced to seek a legal remedy to the baseless and derogatory news aired by the Indian channels. Hours after his announcement, the operators of private channels announced that they banned the airing of all Indian channels except for Doordarshan.
The government welcomed the decision terming it as good.
Later this week, the government sent a letter to the government of India expressing concerns over the defamatory materials featured in some Indian television channels and urged the latter to take steps against those slanderous materials.
It said that the materials were fake, baseless and insensitive as well as abusive towards Nepal and its leadership and tend to mislead and misinform while breaching the decorum of a civilised society.
“The government has requested New Delhi to immediately take steps against these obscene materials about Nepal disseminated by Indian media and make sure that such materials do not find space in the media,” said a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA).
Nepal has said in the letter that media posture against a friendly neighbour and its leadership would hurt the feelings of Nepali people and political leaders.
Saying that Nepal and India enjoy age-old friendly bilateral relations with socio-cultural and people-to-people connections, the government has made a note that such smearing campaigns would only create bitterness in the relations and peoples between the two neighbours.
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