The Mumbai Police on Saturday held a press conference to reveal that the audit report of BARC has confirmed that some executives of the rating agency were indeed involved in TRP manipulation. Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Milind Bharambe told the media that the said forensic audit from BARC was received last week.
The audit was performed after the new management took over the organisation’s operations this year, following information reports from various sources. According to Bharambe, it has been found out in the audit that from May 2017 to November 2019, the TRPs of English and Telugu channels were tampered.
According to forensic report by BARC’s team, manipulation was a part of plan wherein number one news channel was pushed to second spot. Three methods – outlier, meta-rules and channel audience control – were used by the accused channels to tamper the TRP ratings.
“There were several complaints earlier of TRP viewership and data being manipulated when Partho Dasgupta was the CEO of BARC. Allegations made by whistleblowers and others on manipulation of data were suppressed. However, after the new dispensation took over, a third-party forensic audit of the entire data was ordered which has vindicated our findings and investigation,” said Bharambe.
“These are the findings of the third-party audit. The report says that in some cases, the ratings of these news channels appear to be pre-decided. It also points to cartelisation of some of the ex-top officials of BARC (in manipulation of data),” he added
Meanwhile, Republic TV, one of the prime accused in the said case, called Mumbai Point laughable for their press conference.
Earlier this week, Parthi Dasgupta, a former CEO of BARC, was arrested in the manipulation case by the Mumbai Police. Prior to that, ex COO Romil Ramgarhia was also arrested in the same case.
The Mumbai Police have so far arrested 15 people in the TRP manipulation case.
