Hindu knocks, highest court opens its doors

Amid high drama outside his residence, Justice Lahoti, in turn, listed the case for Monday before a bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice S B Sinha.

The judge’s decision came despite the fact that the newspaper’s Hindu knocks, highest court opens its doors petition, prepared under senior advocate Harish Salve, did not have the requisite vakalatnama (power of attorney). The vakalatnama is the client’s (in this case, The Hindu’s five staffers) formal authorisation to its lawyers to file the petition.

The petition challenges the Tamil Nadu Assembly’s decision to imprison five staffers for 15 days for an editorial and a news report calling it ‘‘breach of privilege.’’

It also requests the court to declare the Assembly’s resolution illegal and order a stay on the execution of the arrest warrant issued by the Speaker of the Assembly.

Speaker K Kalimuthu had issued arrest warrants against then Editor N Ravi, Executive Editor Malini Parthasarathy, Publisher S Rangarajan, Chief of Bureau V Jayant and Special Correspondent Radha Venkatesan.

Speaking to The Sunday Express, Salve said that the Assembly’s decision ‘‘violated due process of law since there is nothing definite and clear about the alleged offence.’’

The privileges that the Assembly claims were breached, Salve said, have not been codified despite several such run-ins in the past. He referred to the landmark Maneka Gandhi vs Union of India case (1978) in which the apex court had ruled that any procedure established by law must satisfy the test of being ‘‘just, fair and reasonable.’’

Earlier, after a day of nationwide protests, journalist Kuldip Nayar had filed a PIL in the apex court, too, but later said that he withdrew it as the newspaper itself moved the court.