3 min readNew DelhiMay 30, 2026 05:16 AM IST
THE Delhi High Court on Friday upheld the 2012-2013 regulation over broadcast and cable services that fixes 12 minutes of ads per hour, with a 10-minute cap on commercial advertisements and a 2-minute cap for self-promotional ads.
A division bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Amit Mahajan disposed of 17 petitions, filed by entertainment channels, news broadcasters, regional channels among others, challenging the regulation by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) as being violative of Article 14 (right to equality) and Article 19 (right to free speech). The regulation was brought in in 2012 and amended in 2013.
The verdict comes after over a decade since the first petition was moved in 2013, and the last petition in 2021.
The broadcasters had pointed out that their primary revenue source is advertising and the time ceiling interferes with it, undermines the broadcasters’ economic viability and impacts their right to commercial speech.
The Centre, on the other hand, had argued that since advertisements is a major source of revenue for broadcasters, they deliberately lengthen the duration of commercial breaks, thus reducing the quality of viewing experience. It was also argued that the broadcasters do not have unfettered right to access or use airwaves which is scarce public property.
The bench, recording the well-settled position of law that spectrum and airwaves constitute scarce, finite public resources which vest in the people, and are held by the State in a fiduciary capacity as trustee, reasoned that “broadcasters cannot claim an unfettered right to exploit spectrum for commercial purposes,” and thus the state can regulate the manner and extent of such usage.
“The measures taken by TRAI to impose a temporal limit on advertisements, in order to ensure that no material resource is exploited for excessive commercial gain by broadcasters, bear a proximate and rational nexus to the constitutional mandate of ensuring that material resources of the community are distributed and utilised so as to subserve the common good,” the court held.
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The bench reasoned, “Once broadcasters avail themselves of the privilege of utilising public spectrum under statutory licence, they cannot disclaim the corresponding obligation to adhere to conditions designed to regulate its use in the public interest. The imposition of a temporal ceiling on advertisements is one such condition, directed not at suppressing expression, but at structuring the use of a public resource in a manner consistent with viewer welfare.”
