India is a democratic country and the courts cannot control forms of political propaganda, the Supreme Court said on Monday, while declining to consider a PIL for a direction for probe into 'toolkit' and suspend the registration of Congress party.
The plea accused Congress of indulging in anti-national acts by tarnishing the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and playing with the lives of people during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and M R Shah asked petitioner advocate Shashank Shekhar Jha how a petition under Article 32 could be entertained by the court against political propaganda.
"If you don’t like the toolkit, ignore it," the bench told Jha who contended there was propaganda to use the term "Indian variant" for the coronavirus mutant and cited that Singapore had taken objection to the use of terms like "Singapore variant".
“Singapore had banned everything," he said.
“But, India is a democracy, you know," the bench told him, adding the courts could not control the forms of political propaganda.
The court cannot issue directions under Article 32 of the Constitution, the bench said, asking Jha to withdraw his plea with liberty to pursue remedies under appropriate law.
The bench also noted that precious time of the Supreme Court was being taken up by "frivolous petitions".
“All of these petitions take precious time of the Supreme Court," the bench said, pointing out a criminal investigation was already pending in the 'Toolkit' matter.
On this, Jha agreed to withdraw the petition.
In May, this year, the BJP had alleged a ‘toolkit’ has been prepared by the Congress party to tarnish the image of PM Modi over handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, the Congress party had accused BJP leaders of releasing a forged and fabricated letter and termed it as an attempt to divert the attention of the people and to hide the failure of the government in handling the health crisis.
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