A-G grants consent for contempt against comic artist for tweets

Attorney General KK Venugopal on Tuesday granted his consent for initiating criminal contempt of court against comic artist Richa Taneja for her tweets purportedly showing "the Supreme Court was biased towards the ruling party and tailor its judgement to its benefits".

In response to a plea by a law student, Aditya Kashyap, the top law officer of the country said each of her tweets and cartoon attached was "intended to denigrate the Supreme Court of India and lower its authority in the eyes of the public".

The tweets by Taneja with cartoons attached were in contempt of the Supreme Court as those portrayed the apex court had "ceased to be an impartial organ of the State", he said.

Following the top court's order granting bail to Republic TV's Editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, Taneja through a Twitter handle @sanitarypanels posted a number of tweets. This is "clearly calculated to undermine the public confidence in the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court of India", he said.

The student has sought the consent of the Attorney General to initiate contempt action against the artist saying her tweets were based on "distorted facts, inspired by malice and amount to criminal contempt". He also claimed the line between humour and contempt of court was violated by her tweets for insinuating motives for the judgements.

Last month, Venugopal had granted consent for initiating contempt against comedian Kunal Kamra for a fresh "grossly vulgar and obnoxious" tweet against the Chief Justice of India. He had earlier too given the similar nod for contempt against Kamra for other tweets. The A-G's consent is a statutory requirement for filing a contempt petition.