The Supreme Court asked the Centre on Tuesday why it was shying away from allowing community radio and private FM radio stations from broadcasting news and asked the government to consider permitting them to air news and current affairs programme on the basis of information available in public domain.

A bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar, Justice N V Ramana and Justice D Y Chandrachud said it might not be feasible to give a free hand to private radio stations to broadcast their own news as it might create "havoc" in sensitive areas like the north-east and Jammu and Kashmir but they should be permitted to take the contents of newspapers and TV channels to broadcast them.

At present, 281 private FM channels are operational in 84 cities and the government told the court that it has decided to e-auction 839 more channels in 294 cities.