The ‘suo motu’ initiative by the Supreme Court for laying down the guidelines for media on reporting of the court proceedings on Tuesday faced a stiff challenge from senior advocate Ram Jethmalani while questioning the powers of the top court to initiate such a move under Article 142 of the Constitution.
Citing several important judgements of larger constitution benches, including those in the famous Gopalan and Manaka Gandhi cases, Jethmalani submitted before a five-judge constitution bench, headed by CJI S.H. Kapadia that the provision of Article 142 had been made to hear the cases coming before the apex court but it was not meant for initiation of suo motu initiative in a case.
“The power of Article 142 is only for deciding a pending case. It is not the inherent power (of the Supreme Court), it is a constitutional power and has to be exercised only in a case coming before to the court,” Mr Jethmalani said.
While concluding his arguments Jethmalani told a bench of CJI Kapadia and Justices D.K. Jain, S.S. Nijjar, Ranjana Desai and J.S. Khehar; “I speak with great humility to your lordships to avoid it (the guidelines). Media does not need any guidelines.”
Earlier, he said there was a perceptible difference between Indian and the American constitutions on “inherent” powers of the court to deal with issues related to citizens’ rights. The US Constitution recognises such action as per the “due process of law” but “our” Constitution lays down that any “reasonable restrictions” on fundamental rights of citizens could be made only by a proper legislation passed by Parliament.
Even the Parliament does not have absolute powers for enacting a law that curtails the rights of citizens. “Citizens cannot be deprived of liberty unless a procedure is prescribed in the law and such procedure must be reasonable, fair and just,” Jethmalani said while explaining Gopalan case verdict on inherent powers of court under Article 142.