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AHMEDABAD, India, March 3 (AFP) - Indian authorities in the western state of Gujarat said Sunday they had banned Pakistan's PTV channel for broadcasting what they termed provocative reports of the sectarian violence which has claimed nearly 500 lives here.

"PTV has been banned from today (Sunday) and it will be banned until the situation improves," Gujarat Home Minister Gordhanbhai Zadafia said.

Accusing the PTV reportage of fanning the communal flames in Gujarat, Zadafia said, "Sometimes authorities have to take certain actions in the interests of society at large. Such telecasts have spread violence."

In Islamabad, a spokesman for the state television network regretted the decision and said PTV "has been reporting nothing but the facts as they have unfolded."

"PTV does not have direct access to news gathering in India and depends on visual footages and news reports from international sources," the spokesman added.

Earlier on Sunday, Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi had warned that if any satellite television channel telecast programmes which were "not in the interest of communal harmony, they would be banned".

One of them had already been banned, Modi said referring to PTV, while India's Star News Channel had been taken off air for a few hours on Saturday.

According to Modi, a Star TV report had said the security in Gujarat's commercial capital of Ahmedabad was slack, leaving people vulnerable to the fury of violent mobs.

A Star News employee on Sunday confirmed that the channel had been blocked for two hours in Gujarat on Saturday, but transmission had returned to normal on Sunday.

The violence in Gujarat erupted after a mob of about 1,000 people -- believed to be Muslims -- torched a train carrying Hindu activists, killing 58 people. 

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