Revision as of 13:56, 7 January 2016

Decriminalization of defamation

The Times of India, Jul 25 2015

A Subramani

HC: Can't decriminalize defamation

While the Supreme Court is seized of a batch of petitions questioning the constitutionality of criminal defamation proceedings, the Madras high court stopped just inches short of decriminalizing the `offence' when it ruled that persons facing such cases could not be considered to have a `criminal background'. “The trend appears to be towards decriminalization of defamation. The SC is also seized of the issue. In such circumstances, it is not possible for us to convince ourselves that filing of a private complaint of defamation against a person for writing articles in a magazine could make him a person with criminal background,“ ruled a division bench of Justice V Ramasubramanian and K Ravichandrabaabu.

Tamil Nadu government is the biggest defamation complainant in the state, having filed more than 110 criminal defamation complaints since 2011.The bench was passing orders on a petition filed by freelance journalist M Nedunchezhian, whose application to be enrolled as an advocate was rejected by the Bar Council of TN and Puducherry, because a criminal defamation complaint was pending against him.

Constitutional validity of criminal defamation challenged

The Times of India Dec 22 2015

TIMES NEWS NETWORK The maintainability of the criminal defamation case filed by finance minister Arun Jaitley against AAP leaders Arvind Kejriwal and five others hinges on the impending judgment of the Supreme Court on petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the criminal defamation provision in IPC.

A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant is likely to pronounce its verdict in January on petitions filed by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and Kejriwal. After holding extensive hearing over 19 days, the SC had reserved its order on August 8.

The court will decide whether IPC Sections 499 and 500 are an infringement on the individual's right to freedom of speech and expression and whether remedy against defamatory statements can be sought only through civil process--defamation suit -seeking damages from offender. The SC will also consider whether the tone, tenor and stringency of Sections 499 and 500 of the IPC needs to be read down.

During the hearings, the Centre and many state go vernments had opposed the plea for quashing of criminal defamation provisions in IPC.They had argued the penal provision acted as a deterrent and prevented people from maligning reputations. They had contended that scrapping the law would lead to anarchy in society as people would get away with destroying the hard-earned reputation of a person.

Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi had told court that such a penal provision was a must in the present era of social media when a person's reputation could be sullied in a second. He had said such activities could not be allowed under the guise of constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression. “If Section 499 goes then it means that a person will have aright to hurl abuses at others.Can any civilised society permit such a thing? Someone's hard-earned reputation will be destroyed in a second. It will result in anarchy in society,“ he had said.

Swamy and other petitioners submitted that criminal defamation was unconstitutional as it put unreasonable restrictions on right to free speech and expression and it should be scrapped for violation of fundamental rights.