New Delhi: The Supreme Court Thursday reserved its orders on whether it will issue a show cause notice to comedian Kunal Kamra on petitions seeking to initiate contempt of court proceedings against him.
A bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, R. Subhash Reddy and M.R. Shah said it will pronounce orders on the matter at 10.30 am Friday.
On 12 November, Attorney General K.K. Venugopal had given consent to eight persons, including lawyers, to initiate contempt of court proceedings against Kamra for his tweets criticising the Supreme Court and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud.
During the hearing Thursday, the court heard Advocate Nishant Katneshwarkar for a few minutes before posting the matter for Friday.
Katneshwarkar had noted that the tweets Kamra posted after the AG’s consent to contempt proceedings did not show any remorse on the comedian’s part.
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Kamra refused to apologise
On 12 November, Kamra had posted a series of tweets criticising the SC after it granted interim bail to Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami in a 2018 suicide abetment case. He had been critical of the apex court fast-tracking Goswami’s bail plea.
The AG’s office had then received several complaints against Kamra for his tweets, and he granted consent for contempt proceedings the same day.
The AG’s consent is necessary for a private individual to initiate contempt proceedings against anybody in the Supreme Court, according to the Contempt of Courts Act 1971.
In a letter to the lawyers seeking contempt proceedings, the AG had said, “I find that today people believe that they can boldly and brazenly condemn the Supreme Court of India and its judges by exercising what they believe is their freedom of speech. But under the Constitution, the freedom of speech is subject to the law of contempt and I believe that it is time that people understand that attacking the Supreme Court of India unjustifiedly and brazenly will attract punishment under the Contempt of Courts Act, 1972.”
The AG’s letter had also specifically pointed out certain statements from Kamra’s tweets — “honour has left the building(Supreme Court) long back” and “Supreme Court of the country is the most Supreme joke of the country”.
AG Venugopal noted that apart from these comments, Kamra had also posted a picture of the Supreme Court dressed in saffron colour with the flag of the ruling party, the BJP.
Taking strong exception to this tweet, he had written, “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.”
However, a day after the AG’s consent, Kamra said he would neither retract nor apologise for the remarks.
In an open letter posted on Twitter, Kamra said his view had not changed since the AG’s consent, because the “silence of the Supreme Court of India on matters of other’s personal liberty cannot go uncriticized”.
“All that I tweeted was from my view of the Supreme Court of India giving a partial decision in favour of a Prime Time Loudspeaker,” Kamra wrote.
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