Sacha Wil­son

The State has to pay the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, which op­er­ates Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices Ltd, close to $3 mil­lion in dam­ages for its un­equal treat­ment and de­lay in grant­i­ng them a FM ra­dio broad­cast­ing li­cence.

Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh award­ed com­pen­sato­ry and vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages yes­ter­day by way of a video con­fer­ence at the San Fer­nan­do High Court.

This was the end re­sult of a eight-year le­gal bat­tle be­tween the Ma­ha Sab­ha and the State re­gard­ing the grant­i­ng of a li­cence for Ra­dio Jagri­ti 102.7 FM. Boodoos­ingh said this case showed dis­crim­i­na­tion "plain and sim­ple."

He said: "The award was meant pri­mar­i­ly to de­ter pub­lic au­thor­i­ties and per­sons ex­er­cis­ing pub­lic func­tions from en­gag­ing in or per­sist­ing with un­equal treat­ment." Ex­press­ing his sat­is­fac­tion with the sum, the Ma­ha Sab­ha's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Sat­narayan Ma­haraj called on the State to show good faith and en­sure that those who dis­crim­i­nat­ed against the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty and the Ma­ha Sab­ha were pros­e­cut­ed.

"We asked the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to in­ves­ti­gate this, but the com­mis­sion is in lim­bo," he said. "We call on the State to go af­ter the peo­ple in Cab­i­net who did this wrong. Iden­ti­fy those who lied to the court." The Ma­ha Sab­ha had filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the at­tor­ney gen­er­al for in­equal­i­ty of treat­ment in its fail­ure to grant them a ra­dio broad­cast­ing li­cence. In a land­mark judg­ment on Feb­ru­ary 5, 2004, Jus­tice Carl­ton Best ruled that there was un­equal treat­ment in Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices' ap­pli­ca­tion in re­la­tion to Citadel Ltd. The mat­ter was ap­pealed.

The Court of Ap­peal al­so found there was un­equal treat­ment. The Ma­ha Sab­ha sought fur­ther re­dress at the Privy Coun­cil. The Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee ruled, on Ju­ly 4, 2006, that the State had dis­crim­i­nat­ed against the Ma­ha Sab­ha and held that its con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion was vi­o­lat­ed.

The Privy Coun­cil or­dered the State to grant the li­cence to the Ma­ha Sab­ha forth­with. But the Ma­ha Sab­ha was not award­ed the li­cence un­til Sep­tem­ber 22 that year. The as­sess­ment hear­ing for dam­ages in this mat­ter was heard in Ju­ly for three days. Yes­ter­day, Boodoos­ingh said he took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion among oth­er things the State's de­lay in deal­ing with the Ma­ha Sab­ha's ra­dio li­cence ap­pli­ca­tion in Oc­to­ber 2000, as well as the State's un­jus­ti­fied de­lay in com­ply­ing with the Privy Coun­cil judg­ment.