The Media Rights Institute (MRI) filed an appeal against the decision of the Sabail District Court to fulfill the lawsuit against National TV and Radio Council to consider the failure of NTRC to respond to the information inquiry unfounded. The case was given to Judge Tofig Semedov’s execution. Judge Tofig Samadov will consider the case.
The NTRC did not respond to all questions included in the information inquiry and stated that the conduction of the monitoring is regulated by the legislation. On 2 February 2010, a decision was issued in the Sabail District Court on the lawsuit filed regarding NTRC’s failure to fully respond to the inquiry.
Another lawsuit, which was filed against this organ because a different information inquiry addressed to NTRC on 10 March, 2010, within the framework of the project “Free Airwaves,” was not responded to. In its response to the inquiry, NTRC stated that it is possible to obtain requested information from the council’s website (www.ntrc.gov.az). The information inquiry requested information about the list of frequencies allocated for TV and radio broadcasting, the list of frequencies which are currently in use, and the list of frequencies which are empty in the Republic of Azerbaijan. However, the requested information does not exist on the council’s website. Therefore, MRI filed a lawsuit to consider the defendant’s failure to completely respond to the questions in the inquiry unfounded and to compel NTRC to answer the inquiry comprehensively.
Sabail District Court judge Kamale Amirkhanova adopted a decision on 22 April, 2010 to reject the lawsuit on grounds that MRI correspondent Khalid Agaliyev’s identification card was not added to the lawsuit. Taking into account that this was not considered in the legislation, on 17 May, 2010 the plaintiff filed an appeal against the decision in the Sabail District Court.