{"id":60339,"date":"2019-02-06T14:43:59","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T09:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/?p=60339"},"modified":"2019-02-06T16:19:13","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T10:49:13","slug":"sc-issues-contempt-notice-prashant-bhushan-attorney-general-venugopals-plea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/constitutional-law-news\/supreme-court-news\/sc-issues-contempt-notice-prashant-bhushan-attorney-general-venugopals-plea\/","title":{"rendered":"SC issues contempt notice to Prashant Bhushan on Attorney General Venugopal\u2019s plea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta wants court to give deterrent punishment to Bhushan, Attorney General KK Venugopal disagrees<\/em><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court, on Wednesday (February 6), issued a notice to advocate Prashant Bhushan<\/a> on a contempt of court petition filed by Attorney General KK Venugopal<\/a>. Bhushan accepted the notice in person and has been directed to file his reply within three weeks.<\/p>\n

Venugopal had moved the plea against Bhushan after the latter contented, through a series of tweets, that the Attorney General had misled the apex court last week on the process followed in the controversial appointment of Nageswara Rao as the interim director of the CBI. During a hearing on a plea filed by NGO Common Cause, Venugopal had told the Supreme Court bench led by Justice Arun Mishra that the selection committee mandated to pick the CBI director had cleared Rao\u2019s appointment as interim head of the agency, first when CBI director Alok Verma was divested of his responsibilities on October 23 and then again when he was summarily dismissed by the panel on January 10.<\/p>\n

Bhushan had, in a series of tweets, claimed that Venugopal had misled the court. To support his contention, Bhushan had claimed that he had spoken to Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, a member of the selection committee that also comprises Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi<\/a>. Bhushan claimed that according to Kharge the selection committee had not discussed the appointment of Rao as interim CBI director.<\/p>\n

Rao\u2019s stint as interim CBI director ended on February 2 after the selection committee, by a 2:1 majority decision, appointed former Madhya Pradesh Director General of Police, Rishi Kumar Shukla as the new full-time director of the agency. With Shukla having taken over charge of the investigation agency, the petition challenging Rao\u2019s appointment has become inconsequential.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, as the bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Naveen Sinha resumed hearing arguments in the petition challenging Rao\u2019s appointment, the issue of whether Bhushan can be held in contempt for his tweets took precedence.<\/p>\n

Curiously, Venugopal insisted that he did not favour the court giving out any punishment to Bhushan on account of possible contempt and that he would, instead, prefer \u201cauthoritative words\u201d from the court on the issues red flagged by him. However, Venugopal\u2019s immediate junior in the government\u2019s team of law officers, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, implored the bench to penalize Bhushan.<\/p>\n

Venugopal informed the bench that the selection committee had discussed the issue of Rao\u2019s appointment as interim CBI director and that even Kharge had signed on the panel\u2019s decision. Justice Mishra wondered how Bhushan posted the tweets about a matter that was\u00a0sub judice.<\/em>\u00a0The Attorney General then contended that Bhushan\u2019s action could be seen as \u201ccontempt by speech\u201d since the comments \u201clower the authority of the court\u201d and \u201cintervene with the working of the court\u201d.<\/p>\n

As Justice Mishra lamented the \u201cunwelcome practice\u201d of lawyers routinely making statements on pending matters, the Attorney General pointed out that even as the case was proceeding, \u201c12 cameramen are waiting for lawyers outside\u201d to get their comments. Venugopal then urged the petitioner (Bhushan) to desist from discussing\u00a0sub judice<\/em>\u00a0matters in public and added that while it is presumed that comments made in public and in the media do not affect the opinion of a judge, this may not always happen.<\/p>\n

Justice Mishra said that the Bar should not display a sycophancy towards the Bench and added that lawyers like the Attorney General and senior advocate Fali Nariman had made the Bar \u201cworthy and admirable\u201d. Justice Mishra then proceeded to say that the extant case (the contempt petition) involves larger issues and that the bench would want to \u201csettle the law\u201d on them. Justice Sinha concurred with Justice Mishra and added that \u201ctime has come to realize that with freedom comes responsibility\u201d.<\/p>\n

Venugopal then insisted that while does want the law on contempt settled in the present case, he is not pressing for any punishment to be meted out for anyone.<\/p>\n

Solicitor General Mehta, disagreeing with the Attorney General, told the bench: \u201cI can cite 10 instances where a judgment is passed by the highest court and some lawyers say it is a black day for the judiciary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mehta, on behalf of the Centre, proceeded to say that the bench should award a \u201cdeterrent punishment\u201d to Bhushan as \u201cthe respondent has been involved in several such instances.\u201d He added that the \u201cLordships\u2019 magnanimity should not be taken as a form of weakness\u201d and urged the bench to issue a notice to Bhushan.<\/p>\n

Responding to the Solicitor General\u2019s request, Justice Mishra said: \u201cPunishment shouldn’t come for lawyers usually. Contempt is like a\u00a0brahmashtra<\/em>. It should be used sparingly so that it doesn’t lose its value. We are mindful of how reckless comments deprive dignity of others without a due process of law\u2026 the larger issue here is that media trial decides the reputation of a person who, ultimately, may win in court but has been widely criticized in public (sic). There is no repairing mechanism for that reputation\u201d.<\/p>\n

The bench then issued a notice to Bhushan, which he accepted in open court. While Bhushan has to reply to the contempt notice within three weeks, the contempt plea has been posted for its next hearing on March 7.<\/p>\n

— India Legal Bureau<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta wants court to give deterrent punishment to Bhushan, Attorney General KK Venugopal disagrees The Supreme Court, on Wednesday (February 6), issued a notice to advocate Prashant Bhushan on a contempt of court petition filed by Attorney General KK Venugopal. Bhushan accepted the notice in person and has been directed to file […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[64],"tags":[5368,39115,52043,47145,6183,59121,2967,2340,20232],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/IL\/uploads\/2019\/02\/06144205\/Prashant-Bhushan.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}