No, Nepal has not banned all private Indian TV channels except DD News - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
July 27, 2023
A message is doing rounds on social media, which claims that Nepal has banned all private Television channels of India, except DD News. Let’s verify the truthfulness of this claim through this article.
Claim: Nepal bans all Indian TV channels except DD News.
Fact: Cable operators in Nepal banned Indian private TV News channels in 2020 for broadcasting content detrimental to their country’s interests. But the ban was lifted after a short period. As claimed in the viral message, the Nepal government has recently not banned the Indian TV channels except DD News. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a keyword search on the internet. This search led us to multiple news reports (here, here, and here) on Nepal cable operators’ decision to ban Private Indian news Channels. But these were from 2020; there are no recent news reports about Nepal banning Indian TV channels.
Reportedly, in July 2020, the cable TV operators in Nepal suspended the transmission of Indian private TV news channels, claiming that they were broadcasting content that was hurting the sentiments of Nepal.
“Nepal’s cable and satellite television providers have stopped airing Indian news channels, with one operator saying on Friday that the move was in response to public complaints against “objectionable” content broadcast about Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli” Al Jazeera reported. Later, it was reported that the Television operators in Nepal came under severe public pressure to lift the ban (here and here), which they eventually did (partially).
To sum up, the Government of Nepal has not banned all private Indian TV channels except DD News.