BARC CEO Sunil Lulla quits

Sunil Lulla, who headed the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) through the television viewership assessment body”s most tumultuous time, has quit, officials said on Thursday.
Lulla, who had joined the body in October 2019, succeeding Partho Dasgupta, has stepped down, they said, without divulging the reasons for the move or specifying any details on the planned succession.

During Dasgupta”s term as the chief executive, the Mumbai police had started a probe into allegations of manipulation of television rating points (TRP), which led to the arrest of Dasgupta and a slew of other officials from the council and Hansa, the agency appointed by it as a vendor.

The police alleged that households under monitoring were paid to keep their TV sets on, which led to an artificial increase in a particular channel”s viewership number. Dasgupta”s alleged chats with Republic TV channel”s Arnab Goswami also led to a controversy.

BARC responded to it by suspending the weekly ratings on news channels and assured everybody about taking a slew of steps to be as accurate as possible on its core work.

An email sent to a spokesperson for BARC about the resignation was not immediately answered. PTI