Arnab Goswami paid me $12,000 and Rs 40 lakh to repair rankings: Dasgupta

THE FORMER CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, Partho Dasgupta, has claimed in a handwritten assertion to Mumbai Police that he obtained US$12,000 from Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami for 2 separate holidays and a complete of Rs 40 lakh over three years, in return for manipulating rankings in favour of the information channel, in response to the supplementary chargesheet filed within the TRP rip-off case.
The 3,600-page supplementary chargesheet, filed by Mumbai Police on January 11, additionally features a BARC forensic audit report, WhatsApp chats purportedly between Dasgupta and Goswami, and statements of 59 individuals, together with former council workers and cable operators.
The audit report names a number of information channels, together with Republic, Times Now and Aaj Tak, and lists situations of alleged manipulation in addition to “pre-fixing” of rankings for the channels by BARC’s prime executives.
The supplementary chargesheet was filed in opposition to Dasgupta, former BARC COO Romil Ramgarhia and Republic Media Network CEO Vikas Khanchandani. A primary chargesheet was filed in opposition to 12 individuals in November 2020.
According to the second chargesheet, Dasgupta’s assertion was recorded within the workplace of the Crime Intelligence Unit on December 27, 2020, at 5.15 pm, within the presence of two witnesses.
Dasgupta’s assertion reads: “I have known Arnab Goswami since 2004. We used to work together in Times Now. I joined BARC as CEO in 2013. Arnab Goswami launched Republic in 2017. Even before launching Republic TV he would talk to me about plans for the launch and indirectly hint at helping him to get good ratings to his channel. Goswami knew very well that I know how the TRP system works. He also alluded to helping me out in the future.”
It states: “I worked with my team to ensure manipulation of TRP ratings that made Republic TV get number 1 rating. This would have continued from 2017 to 2019. Towards this, in 2017 Arnab Goswami had personally met me at St Regis hotel, Lower Parel and given me 6000 dollars cash for my France and Switzerland family trip…also in 2019 Arnab Goswami had personally met me at St Regis and given me 6000 dollars for my Sweden and Denmark family trip. Also in 2017, Goswami had personally met me at ITC Parel hotel and given me Rs 20 lakh cash… also in 2018 and 2019… Goswami met me at ITC hotel Parel and gave me Rs 10 lakhs each time…”

Dasgupta’s lawyer Arjun Singh stated: “We totally deny this allegation as the statement would have been recorded under duress. It does not have any evidentiary value in the court of law.” When contacted, a member of Goswami’s authorized crew declined to remark. Goswami has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and alleged he was being focused.
The chargesheet additionally consists of BARC’s audit report, dated July 24, 2020, which states that proof “indicated favouritism shown to few channels” and “in some cases, we suspect that the ratings were pre-decided”.
For occasion, the report mentions alleged suppression of viewership for Times Now to spice up Republic’s weekly rankings, and highlights a purported dialog between BARC’s prime executives and a senior advertising govt of India Today Group on “pre-fixing” Aaj Tak’s rankings.
With a number of emails and messages between BARC officers hooked up as annexures, the report states that one of many causes given by the council for altering Times Now’s viewership information is to cater for “outlier” information, which is supposed to establish spikes in viewership because of the channel being the “landing page” on some distributors.
The observe of putting a channel on the “landing page” was prohibited by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. But that route was put aside by the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, and the matter is now in Supreme Court.
The audit was carried out by Acquisory Risk Consulting. The govt abstract of the audit report states that “manipulation was evidenced in 2017, 18 and 19 across English News Genre and Telugu News Genre”.
The report states that six prime executives of BARC on the time have been concerned in “manipulation of ratings and violation of the code of ethics” between 2018 and 2019, together with Dasgupta, Ramgarhia, Head of Products (South) Venkat Sujit Samrat, Head of West Rushab Mehta, Vice President of Strategy Pekham Basu, and Chief People Officer and Strategy Manashi Kumar.
In October 2019, Dasgupta was changed by Sunil Lulla as CEO. The supplementary chargesheet features a assertion by a BARC official claiming that in “February 2020, Sunil Lulla told me that there were allegations of TRP rating manipulation from the media industry” in opposition to Dasgupta, Ramgarhia, Mehta, Samrat, Kumar and AVP Pekham Basu. The official states that in “the first week of June 2020, from the server I took the backup of the emails of the suspected persons on a hard drive and gave Ramgarhia’s laptop in the last week of June” to the auditing company.
Mehta, Samrat, Kumar and Basu haven’t been charged by police. The audit report was offered to Mumbai Police in December, two months after it registered an FIR within the TRP case.
Some of the situations cited within the report level to modified rankings that resulted in Republic being the highest channel in English information from 2017. It cites emails and messages as proof for weeks through which Times Now’s information and rankings have been decreased, giving Republic the sting.
On June 18, 2017, the report states, Mehta wrote to Ramgarhia: “As required, Times Now numbers are changed, while Republic is kept the same”. According to the report, “this is pointing that the senior management wanted Republic TV to be number 1, and the team was working to achieve this objective”.
According to the audit report, conversations between BARC’s executives and a prime advertising govt of India Today Group, in 2016, pointed in direction of “pre-fixing” the rankings for Aaj Tak. The report cites “chat message conversations between Romil, Partho, and external officials of channels, hinting about pre-fixing the channel ratings during our analysis”.
When contacted, BARC stated in an e-mail: “As the matter is a subject of an ongoing investigation by the various law enforcement agencies, we are constrained to respond to your enquiries.”
Republic stated in an announcement that “there has been a collusion of corporate and political interests to target” Goswami. “This collusion, which is a result of commercial, political and personal interests, is aimed, quite obviously, at illegally trying to create prejudice against the Republic Media Network,” it stated.
Times Now defended the usage of touchdown pages, stating that they’re “not ruled as illegal” and “are simply the most preferred frequency which is sold and bought at a Premium by perfectly legal means”. It stated the outlier coverage was “abused by corrupt BARC officials to manually intervene and wilfully and deliberately improve channel ranks for favoured channels” and that it’s “contemplating legal action”.
India Today Group didn’t reply to queries from The Indian Express.
While Dasgupta is in jail, The Indian Express reached out to Mehta, Samrat, Ramgarhia, Kumar and Basu. Only Kumar responded. “I had remotely nothing to do with research or ratings as it was a different team which handled market analytics and data,” he stated, including that every part else was “slander”.
The chargesheet additionally consists of statements by cable operators that they have been requested to point out Republic on two channels to extend its TRP in trade for cash — two operators stated they have been requested to lift vouchers of Rs 11,800 every.