Bigg Boss, Rakhi ka Insaaf to air after 11 pm, says govt

Faced with mounting complaints from TV viewers and women outfits about objectionable contents, Government today ordered channels airing TV shows Big Boss and Rakhi ka Insaaf to broadcast them only between 11 pm and 5 am, virtually bracketing them as only for adult viewing.

Both the shows are not for universal viewing and can be aired only in the scheduled time slot, I and B Ministry officials said.

I and B officials claimed this is the first time that the ministry has compulsorily changed time slots of popular TV shows.

While Big Boss is being aired on Colours, Rakhi ka Insaaf is aired on Imagine TV.

The shows cannot also be repeated at any other time slot or shown on news programmes, they said. The Ministry also banned Telegu SS Music channel for a period of seven days for allegedly showing nudity. The decisions were taken at an inter-ministerial meeting represented at by additional secretaries from the Ministry of Home, Women and Child Development, External Affairs and Information and Broadcasting on Monday.

Numerous complaints have been made by viewers as well as the National Commission for Women and social activists who accused the channels of showing explicit content. The decision would be effective with immediate effect that is from today, the officials said.

"We have not asked the producers of the show to modify content or have not done any sort of censoring, just shifted the time slots allotted to them," senior ministry officials said.

The meeting had been called after round-the-clock monitoring of the channels.

Rakhi ka Insaaf, compared by actor-dancer Rakhi Sawant, hit the spotlight after Laksham Prasad, a resident of Jhansi, committed suicide, which his family alleged, was following the humiliation meted out to him on the show.

His family said the youth was upset after Rakhi described him as "impotent" and had gone into depression and refused to eat anything for several days.

Complaints have also been received about the "abusive" language and intimate scenes on 'Big Boss', the officials said.