The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) has been giv­en un­til the end of the week to re­tract its po­si­tion on con­tro­ver­sial state­ments made by Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj on his or­gan­i­sa­tion's tele­vi­sion sta­tion, last month.

The ul­ti­ma­tum was giv­en in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the TATT,on Tues­day, by lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Ma­haraj and Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices, which op­er­ates Ra­dio and TV Jaagri­ti.

In the four-page let­ter, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the com­pa­ny's lawyer Ste­fan Ramkissoon took um­brage with TATT's po­si­tion which was com­mu­ni­cat­ed in a let­ter sent to the com­pa­ny, days af­ter Ma­haraj's in­cen­di­ary state­ments were broad­cast on April 15.

Ma­haraj claimed that cit­i­zens liv­ing in To­ba­go are lazy and la­belled the men as rapists.

TATT first sent a warn­ing let­ter and then a fol­low-up let­ter stat­ing it had no in­ten­tion to ap­ply any fur­ther sanc­tion re­gard­ing this breach be­side the pre­vi­ous warn­ing. It al­so warned that fur­ther sanc­tions may be avail­able if a breach re­oc­curs.

In his let­ter, Ramkissoon chal­lenged the process used by TATT to give the warn­ing.

"The crux of our client's com­plaint is that, as a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty, TATT has pro­ceed­ed on its own to im­pose a sanc­tion (re­gard­less of the grav­i­ty of such sanc­tion) with af­ford­ing them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard in re­la­tion to pur­port­ed al­le­ga­tions against them and/or al­low­ing them to make suf­fi­cient rep­re­sen­ta­tions with re­spect to their al­leged breach­es of ei­ther their con­ces­sion or the draft broad­cast code," Ramkissoon said.

He sug­gest­ed that the pro­posed law­suit would be in the pub­lic's in­ter­est as TATT may have breached the broad­cast code through its course of ac­tion.

"It is un­ac­cept­able that, on the one hand, TATT would seek to sanc­tion our clients in keep­ing with the pro­vi­sions of the draft broad­cast code but then not ap­ply the pro­ce­dur­al pro­tec­tions con­tained in the code such as par­tic­u­lar­is­ing any al­le­ga­tion and al­low­ing per­sons such as our clients, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard," Ramkissoon said.

De­scrib­ing TATT's ac­tion as high-hand­ed and op­pres­sive, Ramkissoon said it had an oblig­a­tion to be trans­par­ent and ob­jec­tive.

"Hav­ing point­ed out to you the ob­vi­ous flaws in your pro­ce­dure, in­clud­ing the breach of your own pol­i­cy, gov­ern­ing act and prin­ci­ples of com­mon law fair­ness it is hoped that good sense would pre­vail and you would im­me­di­ate­ly com­ply with our clients' re­quest," Ramkissoon said as he claimed that the law­suit will be filed if the dead­line is not met.

TATT is the sec­ond or­gan­i­sa­tion to be threat­ened with le­gal ac­tion over Ma­haraj's state­ments.

Ma­haraj and the com­pa­ny's lawyers have threat­ened le­gal ac­tion against the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice over a search war­rant that was ex­e­cut­ed at the me­dia house, as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whether Ma­haraj con­tra­vened the Sedi­tion Act.

TTPS's Di­rec­tor of Le­gal Ser­vices Chris­t­ian Chan­dler has main­tained that the war­rant was le­git­i­mate but stat­ed that it would on­ly be dis­closed by a court or­der.

Chan­dler al­so stat­ed that the TTPS was con­fi­dent it would suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend the pro­posed law­suit, which is yet to be filed.

Ma­haraj and the com­pa­ny are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly and Kiel Tak­lals­ingh.