Manish Tewari, India's union Information and broadcasting minister is planning to check the monopolies in the cable TV sector in the country with the help of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in order to allow viewers to access a wide variety of programmes.

He said, "I have requested the ministry to make a reference to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to ensure that monopolies do not continue to exist in the marketplace, because monopolies are the anti-thesis of choice."

He said that the regulator will look into monopolies across local, state and regional levels also in the overall cable television industry. The digitization process is set to enter the second phase in the country and the ministry is looking to make sure that the customers have enough choices.

The move comes after the government received several complaints about the existence of monopolies by several stakeholders. Several Congress MLAs from Punjab had recently written a letter to the ministry to check the monopolisation of cable TV by the Akali Dal, which is ruling the state.

Tiwari said that the issue is not limited to one particular state and the government is aiming to build a transparent architecture to make sure that consumers wider choice in terms of operators in the market.