PIL filed to cast aspersions on Arundhati Roy: Kerala HC on petition to bar sale of her book

Last month, advocate Rajasimhan moved the court, listing the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Press Council of India, the Kerala Department of Health and Family Affairs, Penguin India and Arundhathi Roy as the respondents. He claimed that the image of the author on the cover of this book, smoking a cigarette, is in contravention of the provisions of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003. He sought a direction to the respondents to prohibit the sale, circulation, and display of the book.

The court said the litigant has refused to take up the issue before the expert statutory authority, a steering committee constituted under the 2003 Act. Instead, he moved the court “without examining the relevant legal position, and without verifying the necessary material, including the presence of a disclaimer on the book, and sought to invoke the extraordinary jurisdiction of this Court under the guise of public interest.”

The union government had submitted that the Steering Committee constituted under the Act of 2003 and the Rules of 2004 is the competent authority to examine allegations of violations of Section 5 of the Act.

The court noted that the petition was filed without even examining the book and, after the filing of a detailed counter-affidavit by Penguin, the suppression of material facts was now sought to be covered up. The court said the petitioner’s argument attributing “intellectual arrogance” to the publisher is entirely irrelevant to the legal questions.

The court said the litigant has not taken even a minimal effort to ascertain the facts or the correct legal position before invoking the jurisdiction of the court. “The petitioner is not the sole guardian of the Act of 2003, as he seeks to portray. A statutory authority comprising experts and senior officials has been established under the Act of 2003 to ensure its proper implementation and to prevent its misuse, where applicable.”