Anushka Mansharamani
On 17th December, the Apex Court reserved orders on whether to notify Kunal Kamra, a comedian, about the petitions filed seeking criminal contempt action against him for his tweets,
He published tweets about the Courts and judges.
The order would be announced on 18th December.
Justice Ashok Bhushan, MR Shah, and R Subhash Reddy examined the petitions filed by Abhyuday Mishra, Skand Bajpai, and Srirang Katneshwar.
Advocate Nishant Katneshwarkar, representing one of the petitions, stated that the tweet is criminal contempt as it read ‘who am I to scandalize the already scandalized’ concerning the top-most court in India.
Further, Kunal Kamra had posted an image of the ruling party and had changed the color of the flag hoisted above the Supreme Court to saffron and tweeted that “Supreme Court of the country is the Supreme Joke of the country.”
Other petitions on the same were disregarded on the basis that the court has already heard a petition regarding the posts made by Kunal Kamra on Twitter.
On 12th November, the Attorney General (AG) found Kunal Kamra’s tweets objectionable and agreed with the court to initiate a criminal contempt petition against him under Section 15(1)(b) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.
He further explained how freedom of speech under the Constitution of India is subject to the contempt law and that attacking the Apex Court was unjustified and therefore attracts the punishment under the Contempt of Courts Act, 1972.
Referring to the image of the Supreme Court dressed in saffron as mentioned above, the AG commented that
“This is a gross insinuation against the entirety of the Supreme Court of India that the Supreme Court of India is not an independent and impartial institution and so too its judges, but on the other hand is a court of the ruling party, the BJP, existing only for the BJP’s benefit.”
Replying to the comment addressing the Judges and the AG, Kunal Kamra stated that his views have not changed, and he does not intend to retract his tweets or apologise for them.
Kunal Kamra,
“Silence of the Supreme Court on matters of other’s liberty cannot go uncriticized.”
He further stated that instead of taking the time to review the petition filed against him, they should rather spend time on several other important matters like the demonetization, anti-CAA petition, etc.
However, it is pertinent to note that earlier, the AG was in disagreement to initiate a similar proceeding against Swara Bhasker, actor for her comments, as according to him, it wasn’t against the Supreme Court of India.
Recently, the AG was also in disagreement to initiate contempt against YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for his public allegations against Justice Ramana.