The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) has taken action against some publications and terminated their membership. The publications include some editions of Gujarat Samachar, Sandesh, The Sunday Times of India in Delhi and Gujarat Mitra and Gujarat Darpan in Surat.
A circular sent out recently to ABC members mentions that the editions of Gujarat Samachar in Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Surat, Sandesh in Ahmedabad, Surat and Baroda, Gujarat Mitra and Gujarat Darpan in Surat, and The Sunday Times of India in Delhi have been taken off ABC.
ABC Secretary, S B Seth, has explained that under the guidelines, a publication loses its membership if it is either not awarded an audit certificate for three consecutive years or hasn't submitted circulation data for two consecutive audit periods.
"The reasons for not receiving the audit certificate can be anything but if the situation continues for three years, the publication will lose membership," Seth said. All the publications mentioned above have lost their membership as they have not received an audit certificate for three consecutive years. Also, under the present law, these publications cannot be readmitted till four audit periods, that is, two years, have lapsed.
"ABC's objective is simple - to audit every publication that would be of interest to advertisers and the basic premise is reader interest. If members don't adhere to certain audit guidelines and principles, which are on parameters of payment of full cover price or incentives to some extent, we cannot give a certificate," Seth observed.
