Seven-judge Supreme Court Bench to hear if legislative privilege overrides free speech

The Supreme Court docket has mentioned a seven-judge Structure Bench would begin listening to from October 6 a sequence of long-pending petitions questioning whether or not legislative privileges can override residents’ fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression.

A 3-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant handed the order in a case travelling again to April 2003. The Hindu had printed an editorial criticising then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.

The Tamil Nadu State Meeting Speaker on the time had handed a decision within the Home accusing the each day of getting “distorted the proceedings of the Meeting, commented opposite to the occasions within the Meeting”.

The decision mentioned the feedback made within the editorial “quantity to breach of privilege of your entire Home” beneath Article 194 of the Structure, which ensures freedom of speech and immunities to Members of State legislatures. The Tamil Nadu State Meeting had handed a decision to arrest 5 senior journalists of The Hindu.

Shortly after the decision, the police sought to arrest the journalists. Nevertheless. the journalists, together with N. Ravi, the then Editor of The Hindu, approached the Supreme Court docket and gained a keep on any coercive motion towards them.

When the case got here up for listening to, senior advocate Harish Salve, showing for the newspaper, argued towards the invocation of Article 194(3) to choke Press freedom enshrined beneath Article 19(1)(a) of the Structure. The apex courtroom additionally examined the bigger authorized difficulty whether or not a vital speech or publication would represent a breach of legislative privilege.

Nevertheless, a Division Bench of Justices Y.Okay. Sabharwal and B.N. Krishna had, on December 8, 2003, referred the tussle between legislative privilege and free speech to a five-judge Structure Bench. The Bench had famous that the petitions and intervening functions, by journalists and the Press Council of India, raised “substantial questions of regulation as to the interpretation of Articles 194(3), 19 and the interaction between these two Articles and Article 21 of the Structure”.

A 12 months later, on December 8, 2004, the five-judge Bench heard Mr. Salve’s submission that the apex courtroom had given contradictory opinions in a 1959 judgment in Pandit MSM Sharma versus Shri Krishna Sharma and a Presidential Reference of 1964 concerning the interaction between free speech and the scope of legislative privileges.

The five-judge Bench had additional referred the case to a seven-judge Bench for an authoritative settlement of the regulation. Mr. Salve, for The Hindu, had submitted that the authorized difficulty had large ramifications and would crop up once more sooner or later. He had argued that legislative privilege was for use as a defend to guard speech of Members on the ground of the Home from authorized motion, and that Article 194 was not meant to be wielded as a sword.

The subsequent order within the case was handed 19 years later, on October 12, 2023, when the Union authorities was impleaded as a celebration by a seven-judge Bench headed by then Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud by which the present CJI, Justice Kant, was a member. The Legal professional Basic of India was requested to help the apex courtroom within the case. The petitions got here up once more on February 2, 2024 to listen to a procedural software for change of advocate-on-record.

The case got here up earlier than Chief Justice Kant, on August 12, 2026, after a hiatus of over two years.