Malicious attempts to curb freedom of press need to be discouraged: HC

The court passed the judgment last week while quashing a defamation complaint made by former Haryana minister Subhash Goyal. The INLD leader had alleged that an article,which had appeared in a national daily three years ago,had defamed former Haryana chief minister Om Parkash Chautala and his party.

Acting on the complaint,a lower court in Haryana had summoned the author of the article among others and initiated proceedings. Aggrieved,the newspaper’s proprietor had moved the high court.

In a detailed judgment,Grover held: “The courts cannot lose sight of the fact that in a democracy,the performance of a government and the administration run by it necessarily need to be circumscribed to debates at the hands of either its own political opponents or the press.”

“The attempt to curb freedom of speech,freedom of press and the power of the pen,therefore,needs to be discouraged and rather,complaints such as these ordinarily should be viewed as attempts of a prudish mind,” the court added.

Holding that the article in question is “a mix of fact and perception”,the court further said that Goyal had no locus standi to institute a complaint,“which does not even remotely affect him or even the association or the political party to which he belongs”.

Maintaining that Article 19 of the Constitution (freedom of speech and expression) cannot be smothered,the court said: “Opinion expressed would certainly be protected by Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India and such free speech,which intelligibly questions a performance of the government and the persons running it,cannot be termed to be defamatory. Hence,such an opinion can at best be seen to be a dissent or disagreement with the prevailing system and thus in a larger interest has to be tolerated no matter how unpalatable it is.”

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