New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed former Union minister Arun Shourie, veteran journalist N. Ram and senior advocate Prashant Bhushan to withdraw their plea challenging the constitutional validity of a legal provision dealing with criminal contempt.
A bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra was informed by senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, who was representing the petitioners, that they want to withdraw the plea as several petitions on the same issue are pending before the apex court and they don’t want “this to be entangled” with them.
The bench, also comprising Justices B.R. Gavai and Krishna Murari, allowed the petition to be withdrawn with liberty to the petitioners to approach the appropriate judicial forum.
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During the brief hearing conducted through video-conferencing, Dhavan said that at this stage the petitioners believe the issue is important, but would not like to raise the issue at this stage. According to Bar and Bench, He requested the court to allow the petitioners to withdraw the plea with liberty to approach the top court again, maybe after two months.
The petitioners had challenged the constitutional validity of a the sub-section of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 which deals with the offence of criminal contempt for “scandalising the court”, saying it was violative of freedom of speech and right to equality.
The listing of the case was at the centre of a controversy when the Supreme Court Registry reportedly “hauled up” its officers for not listing the case before the bench headed by Justice Mishra, which is already dealing with two separate contempt petitions against Bhushan under the same sub-section that the PIL has challenged.
The petition was listed for hearing on August 10 before a bench comprising Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and K.M. Joseph. However, on the same day, the matter was dropped from the list of business.
The petition had challenged the validity of Section 2(1)(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 as being vague, unconstitutional and incompatible with the basic features of the Constitution.
The provision defines what constitutes criminal contempt and says that if by way of publication of words, the dignity of the courts is lowered and if they scandalise the courts then the offence of contempt of court is deemed to have been committed.
The petition alleged the provision violated the freedom of speech and expression.
Supreme Court building. Photo: The Wire
Bhushan faces contempt proceedings
The filing of the plea challenging the validity of the provision assumed significance in view of the fact that a bench headed by Justice Mishra on July 22 had issued a show-cause notice to Bhushan after taking note of a petition urging it to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against him for his tweets on the judiciary and its alleged role in the ‘destruction of democracy’ in India.
The apex court had on August 5 reserved its verdict on the suo motu contempt case against Bhushan.
The top court is also seized of another criminal contempt case against Bhushan, which was initiated in 2009 over his comments against former CJIs in an interview to a magazine.
The top court on August 10 had said further hearings were required in the 2009 criminal contempt case against Bhushan and journalist Tarun Tejpal to examine whether comments on “corruption” against judges per se amounted to contempt or not.
The other two petitioners, Ram and Shourie, have also faced criminal contempt proceedings in the past.
(With PTI inputs)