The Election Commission, on 9 April, said the airtime given to parties by DD News ahead of the Lok Sabha elections have been "disproportionate" and "not balanced", reported The Indian Express.
This comes after a report shared by the news channel with the EC on 5 April said the BJP got 160 hours of airtime coverage on DD News and its regional channels while the Congress only got only half that time, about 80 hours, since 10 March, the day when the election dates were announced.
According to the 5 April report, the principal opposition party, which stood second in terms of airtime coverage, was followed by the CPM with roughly eight hours time on air since, as per The Indian Express.
The EC’s guidelines for DD and AIR say, “No one political party should be given substantially more coverage than the others. This balance need not be achieved in any single day or in a single story, but over a reasonable period of time say one week.”