High Court Grants Bail for Former BARC CEO

Partho Dasgupta, former CEO of India's Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), has been granted bail, following his arrest on charges of 'manipulating' the country's ratings data.

On 24th December last year, Mumbai police arrested Dasgupta (pictured) with fourteen others, including former BARC COO Romil Ramgarhia; and Vikas Khanchandani, CEO of Republic TV, whose ranking is said to have been 'improved fraudulently'. At the time, Milind Bharambe, Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), said BARC India had commissioned a third-party auditor to check the integrity of data collected between 2016 and 2019. According to Bharambe, this auditor looked at data over 44 weeks beginning in mid-2017 - around the time that Republic TV was launched - and claims it found Dasgupta had driven the 'manipulation of data', including swapping the rankings of channels Times Now and Republic TV to give the latter the no.1 spot.

The Bombay High Court has now granted Dasgupta and the other defendants bail, with Dasgupta forced to pay a personal bond of Rs. 2 lakh (nearly £2k), and two sureties of the same amount. Dasgupta has also had to surrender his passport to the police station and been told not leave India without permission of the trial court. The court said it is not clear how long the investigation will continue, adding that the prosecution has already filed a charge sheet comprising more than 4,000 pages.

BARC was launched in 2015 and intended as the solution to a previous round of arguments and accusations over corruption and inaccuracy, including the exclusion of the Nielsen/Kantar joint venture TAM from management of the process. Between 2016 and 2019 BARC was involved in a number of launches including the EKAM cross-media measurement suite, the launch of Out Of Home (OOH) metrics, and a program to enlist the help of bright students to encourage innovation in the industry. In May 2018 BARC's sampling methodology and panel design were certified by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.