Delimitation as Punishment for Good Performance; Mod-Gates Bromance; UP Police Bans Fair; FIR in Nagpur Against VHP for Hurting Religious Sentiments

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Over to Siddharth Varadarajan for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

March 18, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

Officials of the Competition Commission of India raided ad agencies including GroupM, Dentsu and the Interpublic Group, as well as “a broadcasters' industry group” over allegations that they colluded to fix prices, Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil cite sources as saying. One source said that the CCI was probing how ad agencies allegedly connived with some broadcasters to ‘fix ad prices while selling them to clients’. The raids come, they report, “as the ad landscape in India is seeing major shifts following the $8.5 billion merger between Walt Disney and Reliance's India media assets, which Jefferies analysts say will have a 40% share of the ad market in TV and streaming segments.”

At least thirty three policemen and five civilians were injured, and several vehicles and bulldozers were torched in violent clashes between two communities in Maharashtra’s winter capital Nagpur on Monday. While the police claimed that the clashes were triggered by “misinformation”, tensions were high in the city through the day following demonstrations led by Vishwa