NEW DELHI: The ministry of information and broadcasting has reiterated the provision in the Advertising Code that “all advertisement should be clearly distinguishable from the programme and should not in any manner interfere with the programme.

The Advertising Code says that this includes “use of lower part of screen to carry captions, static or moving alongside the programme.”

Information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu told the Lok Sabha in a written reply that a fresh advisory in this regard had been issued to all television channels on 10 March 2017.

This is a provision in Section 7(10) of the Advertising Code which forms part of the Cable TV Networks Acc(Regulation) Act 1995.

According to the Ministry, several advisories have been issued in the past five years on different issues including coverage of anti-terrorist operations, asking TV channels not to telecast inflammatory news of communal nature, urging non-telecast of a film made on the Nirbhaya rape case, and against showing clippings from films which have not been given the ‘U’ certificate.