The Supreme Court on Friday blamed senior advocate and activist Prashant Bhushan for contempt of court due to his tweet.
According to the report of Live Law, reading the judgment, Justice BR Gavai said that Prashant Bhushan has ‘grave contempt of court’. Now on August 20, the bench will hear the sentence.
Prashant Bhushan had made two tweets about Chief Justice SA Bobde and the Supreme Court, about which contempt proceedings were going on.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Justice BR Gavai and Justice Krishna Murari reserved their verdict on August 5 after hearing the case.
Advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for Prashant Bhushan, said while clarifying that he had only criticized the judiciary in general and was not affected by any malfeasance.
Dave said that there are many shortcomings in the functioning of the judiciary, due to which Prashant Bhushan was criticized.
In a detailed affidavit submitted regarding the matter, Bhushan had said, “Criticizing the actions of the CJI or CJI successors is not to humiliate the court and diminish its authority.” To believe or suggest that the CJI is the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court is the CJI, weaken the institution of the Supreme Court of India. ‘
Bhushan said that his tweet about the Chief Justice of India riding a motorcycle was to underscore his anguish over an indirect hearing in the Supreme Court for more than three months during which hardly any case was heard .
The affidavit further states that Bhushan’s tweet about the last four Chief Justices of India was his real impression about him and it is his view that the Supreme Court allowed democracy to be destroyed and not such contempt of contempt may be considered.
The affidavit given by Prashant Bhushan states, ‘All the tweets that I have tweeted are such that I have a genuine opinion about the manner and functioning of the Supreme Court in the last years and especially the last four Regarding the role of Chief Justices, their role in curbing the powers of the executive and ensuring that the Supreme Court functions in a transparent and accountable manner, forces them to say that they contributed to the weakening of democracy. ‘
It further states, ‘Freedom of expression and right to criticism include fair and strong criticism of the judiciary. This is not in any way contempt of court or diminishing the dignity of the court. ‘
In a tweet on 27 June, Bhushan played the last four Chief Justice of the Supreme Court – Justices SA Bobde, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Deepak Mishra and Justice JS Khehar – for the destruction of democracy without a formal emergency in the last six years. Was criticized.
Another contempt proceeding is going on against Prashant Bhushan, in which it is alleged that in an interview given to Tehelka magazine in 2009, he had made unwarranted allegations of corruption on the former judges, which led to contempt of court.
The court has decided to conduct a detailed hearing on this matter.
Prashant Bhushan has been continuously raising issues related to the judiciary and recently he sharply criticized the attitude of the apex court in the case of workers migrating from other states during the Covid-19 epidemic.
Bhushan also gave statements about the treatment being done to the jailed civil rights activists like Varvara Rao and Sudha Bhardwaj, accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case.
News Source: Jurist.Org
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