File photo of the Madras High Court.
Credit: PTI file photo
Chennai: Passing an interim order, the Madras High Court on Thursday directed the Union Government to unblock the website of Vikatan, a legacy media group in Tamil Nadu which publishes a bouquet of magazines, provided the company removed a cartoon depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his hands and legs while sitting opposite to US President Donald Trump.
The website (www.vikatan.com) was blocked by the Union Government on February 15, making it inaccessible for millions of users within the country, while subscribers outside India could visit it.
The development had come hours after Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai demanded strict action against the media group.
The cartoon published in Vikatan Plus, an online magazine, was apparently taking a dig at Modi for “remaining mum” on the issue of US authorities handcuffing illegal immigrants who were sent back to India in military planes.
After waiting for about a fortnight, the Vikatan group had last week announced that it would handle the matter legally and approached the Madras High Court.
Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy, who heard the matter, passed the interim order which said the website could be restored by the Union Government on the condition that the cartoon, which was deemed objectionable by it, is removed.
The Court today granted Vikatan interim relief by ordering that its website could be restored for now, subject to further orders and provided that the caricature is removed.
The media group contended that the website was blocked without giving any opportunity to place its response, while the Union Government saw the cartoon as detrimental to the sovereignty and integrity of India and the country’s friendly relations with the US.
Vikatan has always stood for the freedom of media and the group has been highly critical of the ruling governments in Tamil Nadu and at the Centre.
The group had been at the receiving end in the past too with the then Jayalalithaa government filing a host of defamation cases against Vikatan for publishing articles criticising the AIADMK dispensation.
In April 1987, the then Vikatan editor S Balasubramanian, son of the group’s founder and film producer S S Vasan, was arrested by the Tamil Nadu police based on the orders of the Assembly Speaker P H Pandian, who had remarked that he had sky-high powers as the head of the House, for a cartoon that Ananda Vikatan magazine published. However, he was released within days of the arrest.