NEW DELHI: The Indian government has ordered NDTV India to be taken off air for a day on November 9, after it was found guilty of transmitting sensitive information during a militant attack on a key airbase, reports said on Thursday.

The Hindustan Times said an inter-ministerial committee deemed that the channel had violated broadcast norms while reporting on the Pathankot attack in January.

The ministry of information and broadcasting announced the decision on Thursday after the committee concluded that the channel had revealed “strategically-sensitive” details of the airbase while relaying news from the spot during the attack on January 2.

The report said the anchor and correspondent of the channel gave away information about the number of militants holed up in a building situated in an area meant for air force personnel and details about how the army was planning to take them down.

“…Such crucial information could have been readily picked by terrorist handlers and had the potential to cause massive harm not only to the national security, but also to lives of civilians and defence personnel,” the daily quoted the official report as saying.

The news coverage, according to the report, also revealed details of an arms cache, the ammunition stockpiled at the airbase, of MIGs and fighter planes, and fuel tanks that the suspected terrorists could attack. These details were not provided in the government briefing given during the attack.

Giving out information of the area under attack or specific details on the counterterrorism operations during a siege is in violation of the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2015, the paper said.

The rule prevents channels from beaming live coverage of any antiterrorist operation by security forces. It also states that media coverage has to be restricted to the periodic briefing by a designated officer till the conclusion of the operation.

Channels have been taken off air before for different violations; Al Jazeera was kept off air for five days for showing an incorrect map of India, the paper said. So far, there have been 28 instances of channels being taken off air for violations, it said.

In response to a show-cause notice issued over the alleged violations, NDTV India replied that it was a case of “subjective interpretation” and that most of the information they had put out was already available in the public domain in print, electronic and social media.

However, the committee, in its order, observed that the channel “appeared to give out the exact location of the remaining terrorists with regard to the sensitive assets in their vicinity” when they telecast in real time.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2016