The makers of constitution have granted fundamental rights to every citizen in order to preserve democracy within the democratic country. This landmark judgment of Supreme Court, by majority of 4:1 has established superiority of the individual’s civil and fundamental rights over the detrimental and restrictive policies. No democracy can prosper, if freedom of speech and expression is not given citizens. Although Article 19(1) (a) of Constitution of India only mentions freedom of speech and expression but various significant judgments of Supreme Court[1] have set up that freedom of press is the essential part of the freedom of speech and expression.
The Court rightly observed that freedom of the press has both quantitative and qualitative elements and hence any quantitative restriction leads to contravention of freedom of expression. Justice M.H. Beg who delivered the majority judgment was right in declaring the import policy void and outside the scope of Import Control Order, 1955 as the order only allowed for fixing of quotas and no additional interference. The Supreme Court’s explanation over maintainability of the petitions seeks appreciation as it rightly applied the observation of Bank Nationalization case to uphold the rights of corporate bodies under Art.32 when joined in by affected individuals to invoke their fundamental rights. The Supreme Court cited that “if the State action impairs the right of the shareholders as well as of the Company, the Court will not, concentrating merely upon the technical operation of the action, deny itself jurisdiction to grant relief“.[2] It was rightly opined by the Court that unconstitutional executive actions could not be protected during the proclamation of emergency and also Art 358 could not be applied for laws passed before the proclamation of emergency.
A little appraisal must be made to the judgment delivered by J. Mathew also, who made the dissenting opinion and favoured the Import Policy of 1972-73 on the grounds of effective and efficient utilization of newsprint and also said it rather prevented the monopoly by few newspapers. It is right to say at some extent that the freedom of speech and expression does not connote that newspapers get a right to obtain any amount of newsprint. The Newsprint Control Policy was brought with the aim to ensure fair distribution of imported newsprint and promoting the small newspapers. In fact, it clearly appeared from this decision that few restrictions to freedom of speech and expression may be favoured by the Court.
Saying further, it also seems that the policy of 1972-73 was intended to favour the newspapers of vernacular languages as the government might have felt threatened by the big English newspapers. However, the disapproval to such restrictive policy must be made when it leads to infringement of fundamental rights of big newspapers. It can be said that the purpose of the government through the policy of 1972-73 was failed by the Court order. The fundamental rights had been given the superiority. As a result, government revised the policy and lifted all such discriminatory restrictions on the page limit, circulation, new newspapers and new editions of existing newspapers. The Judgment was undoubtedly, a milestone. However, it will always be an arguable topic to discuss the fate of writ petitions of those shareholders or editors who are foreigners and petitions were brought under the same circumstances.
[1] Express Newspaper Ltd. v. Union of India, AIR 1958 SC 578; Sakal Papers Ltd. & Ors. v. Union of India AIR 1962 SC 305
[2] R.C. Cooper v. Union of India (Bank Nationalization Case), AIR 1970 SC 564.
Aishwarya Says:
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