The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a batch of petitions seeking action against Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma over his alleged hate speeches, directing the petitioners to approach the high court first.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M. Panchi took exception to the growing “trend” among litigants directly approaching the top court for relief.
“You cannot undermine or demoralise the high court judges,” the CJI said.
“This is a very calculated move to undermine the high courts,” he added.
The court was dealing with separate petitions filed by the CPM, CPI leader Annie Raja, Assamese scholar and literary critic Hiren Gohain and four individuals from Assam seeking the registration of FIRs and an apex court-monitored SIT probe into the allegations against Sarma.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that Sarma was a habitual and repeat offender who was undermining and demoralising the constitutional ethos. He argued that Sarma’s speeches had pan-India implications as they were not restricted to Assam.
The bench, however, remained unconvinced. “We are absolutely confident that the high court will deal with the matter in accordance with law and principles,” the bench observed.
Singhvi submitted that there were several earlier instances where the top court had directly entertained petitions.
“I am on the issue of shortcuts. In our anxiety to invoke one jurisdiction, we cannot undermine the jurisdiction of another. The court cannot become a playground for all this. All these issues can be effectively adjudicated by the jurisdictional high court. We see no reason to entertain these petitions filed here and thus relegate the petitioners to the jurisdictional high
court,” CJI Kant said.
Senior advocates C.U. Singh and Nizam Pasha also appeared for the petitioners.
According to the petitioners, Sarma’s alleged hate speeches and statements had been widely disseminated across print, electronic and digital media platforms.
The petitions cited an AI-generated video, uploaded on social media on February 7 and later taken down by the Assam BJP, that depicted a gun-wielding avatar of Sarma taking aim at a framed photograph of two Muslim men. The video was captioned “Point blank shot”.
The CPM has placed in the top court what it claimed were screenshots from the final frame of the video where Sarma’s AI avatar is shown flaunting a cowboy attire, accompanied by slogans that translate into “Foreigner-free Assam”; “Community, land, roots first”; “Why did you go to Pakistan”; and “No forgiveness for Bangladeshis”.
The Assam BJP deleted the video following intense backlash, but by then it had been widely shared and continues to ricochet around the Internet.
The petitioners submitted that the Constitution imposed an affirmative and inviolable duty upon ministers to preserve national unity and constitutional fraternity.
Any conduct that foments communal hatred or social fragmentation strikes at the very root of the constitutional trust reposed in holders of public office and falls outside the permissible sphere of ministerial power, they said.
