Mehak's Blog

With barely a month in office, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat is fast gaining a reputation for making insensitive and sensational comments on everything from ripped jeans to the PM. The new Chief Minister seems to be making headlines often since he was sworn in on March 10. He first turned heads and gained widespread attention with his comment comparing PM Narendra Modi to the Hindu gods. He said it was ‘Lord Ram in Treta Yuga and Lord Krishna in Dwapar Yuga’. Modi, he hailed would do the same job in Kal Yuga. This warranted strong outrage from Opposition parties as they refuted his comments with their own. Sunil Yadav, the spokesperson for Samajwadi Party, tweeted, “One stadium has already been named (after PM). I suggest a temple should be constructed in  Ayodhya (for PM),” in retaliation to the remarks. The BJP’s top brass in Uttarakhand refused to comment, but, the media-in-charge came out in support of the CM’s comments. This silent support only fuelled the ...

So, what if have we learnt from following the news this week? We have learnt that there is a thin line between contempt of court and voicing one’s opinion and the cases of Prashant Bhushan and Swara Bhaskar are wonderful examples to understand how that line is sometimes blurred. As per the Contempt of Court ACT 1971- “(a)contempt of court? means civil contempt or criminal contempt. (b)civil contempt? means wilful disobedience to any judgment, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court or wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court. (c)criminal contempt? means the publication (whether by words, spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise) of any matter or the doing of any other act whatsoever which? (i) scandalises or tends to scandalise, or lowers or tends to lower the authority of, any court; or (ii) prejudices, or interferes or tends to interfere with, the due course of any judicial proceeding; or (iii) interferes or ten...