Court curtail or not, the business of astrology continues as usual on TV. On April 10, Calcutta High Court observed that ?prescription of stones and talismans by astrologers after seeing the palms of people should not be allowed to continue on television?.

But even after a week of the court call, the programmes are on air on local Bengali cable channels like Amar, Srishti and Sonar Bangla.

?These channels don?t seem to care about the court or the cops,? complained Tapan Roy of ATN Bangla.

Roy was a part of a group of eight local channels, which had promised to take astrology and related programmes off their channel in April 2005, after the chief minister expressed his displeasure over the matter.

Only ATN Bangla and Bangla Ekhon made good the pledge.

In September 2005, Calcutta Police had issued a notice to multi-system operators (MSO) to discontinue carrying the programmes on their networks as they violated the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act of 1995.

The notice was contested in the high court by some of the organisers of astrology programmes. The court made the observation and left police free to pursue the matter.

But with the ban on astrology channels still not spelt out in black and white, the programmes continue to fill the screens.

?We?re not aware of any such development,? said Srishti?s Ashok Agarwal, confirming that the ?jyotish? programmes are being beamed on his channel.

?We?re not carrying any live question-and-answer sessions with astrologers, only recorded programmes,? explained CTVN?s Sudeb Roy Chowdhury.

Shutting down the star cast is not easy, as these programmes form the lifeline of the cable channels. With astrologers paying anything between Rs 5,000 and Rs 15,000 per hour, five to six hours of daily programming rakes in the moolah. In the battle for viewer eyeballs, this money is then pumped into paying the MSO for a prime slot.

?When we stopped astrology programmes, we immediately lost Rs 4 lakh in revenue. Having to pay MSOs Rs 6-8 lakh per month as carriage fee, survival is tough,? rued ATN?s Roy.

?There is no future in cable channels, which is why we are shifting to the satellite medium,? offered CTVN?s Roy Chowdhury.