Top court seeks Jayalalithaa response

Observing that criminal defamation cases cannot be filed against political opponents for fair criticism, the Supreme Court on Friday sought the response of the Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa in the writ petition filed by DMDK leader and actor A. Vijayakanth challenging the cases registered against him and others.

A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and C. Nagappan agreed with counsel G.S. Mani, appearing for Vijayakanth, that the CM cannot give a direction for grant of sanction to prosecute Vijayakanth and ask the city public prosecutor to file the defamation complaint. The state had filed 14 cases against Vijayakanth, his wife Premalatha, L. Venkatesan, Parthasarathi and Parthiban.

The bench, while issuing notice to Ms Jayalalithaa in four weeks, also asked the CPP whether he can file a complaint without any application of mind. The bench extended until further orders the stay of all further proceedings in the defamation complaints for his speech in Dharmapuri criticising the CM.

During the resumed hearing, Mr Mani submitted that though the Constitutional validity of Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) had been upheld, yet the present case, apart from the Constitutional validity, also harps on the concept of fair criticism, discernment and dissection of activities of the state government and disapproval of views taken in the matters of administration and policy decisions.

He argued that the petition also raises a question whether the authority who is entitled to launch a prosecution under Sections 499 and 500 IPC through the Public Prosecutor should do it against a person solely because he is critical or has a different opinion.

He said that the office of the public prosecutor has its own independence; and the public prosecutor has been conferred an independent role under the provisions of the CrPC.

It was urged by him that a sustained democracy is predicated fundamentally on the idea of criticism, dissent, and tolerance.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar for the Union government submitted that apart from the Public Prosecutor who has a definitive role under Section 199(2) of the CrPC, the sanctioning authority also has a significant and sacred role under sub-section (4) of the said provision and, therefore, a complaint cannot be filed in a routine manner to harass a citizen.