NEW DELHI: After passing pan-India directions to police to act suo motu against those making hate speeches and harming the social fabric, Supreme Court on Thursday refused to entertain a petition seeking similar action to arrest the trend of seditious speeches openly encouraging anarchy and separatism.
A PIL by ‘Hindu Sena Samiti’ before a bench of CJI Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar had sought SC’s urgent intervention to prevent what it called the growing menace of political leaders, especially those from the opposition, making allegedly provocative public speeches and giving media interviews “prejudicial to national integrity and openly extending threats to the security of the state”.
“Members of different political parties, prominent leaders from the opposition, spokespersons and members of organisations have been making public assertions for creation of conditions for secession akin to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, calling for resorting to subversive activities and armed rebellion,” the PIL said.
However, SC said that “there is a striking difference between hate speech and wrong or false assertions or false claims made by people.”
If we admit this petition, it’ll open floodgates: SC
The CJI Khanna-led bench said, “SC had entertained pleas for curbing hate speech as that was harming social harmony. Guidelines have been laid and the court has issued contempt notices for violation of guidelines. What you want is very wide. You have gone all over the place. If we entertain this petition, there will be a flood of such petitions and it will become impossible to deal with the issue.”
The bench dismissed the PIL saying it could not entertain it. “In case the petitioner has any specific grievance, it can approach the appropriate forum,” it added. SC in April 2023 had given pan-India sway to its Oct 2022 order directing Delhi, UP, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand police to take suo motu action against those making hate speeches irrespective of the religious community they belonged to.
The court had warned that any hesitation on part of state police to act against hate speech will be viewed as contempt of SC and appropriate action will be taken against erring officers.
“Hate speech is a serious offence affecting the fabric of the nation and goes to the heart of our republic and about dignity of people. What we have in our mind is a larger public good and are trying to ensure establishment of rule of law so that things do not go out of our hands,” an SC bench of Justices K M Joseph and B V Nagarathna had said in April last year.