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Supreme Court Halts Gujarat High Court’s Controversial Apology Order
The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed operation of the Gujarat High Court order asking; Times of India (ToI), Indian Express and Divya Bhaskar dailies to tender fresh apologies for incorrect reporting of court proceedings. [M Progressive Packing Products establishing-v- Mr. Bennett Coleman and Co Ltd Registrar Gujarat High Court]
Justices BR Gavai, Prashant Kumar Mishra, KV Viswanathan issued the notice on ToI’s appeal and put a stay to the High Court order.
“Pass an issue notice, continue staying on the impugned order,” the Court said while clearing the air that the writ proceedings can proceed.
By Hon’ble Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra, BR Gavai and KV Viswanathan along with
Supreme Court
Sri Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra , BR Gavai And KV Viswanathan along with Supreme Court
The three newspapers had on September 4 apologised to the court for having published wrong reports on court proceedings but the Gujarat High Court had turned down the apologies on September 2.
This led to the instant appeal by ToI before the apex court The said appeal was due to lack of evidence on the part of ToI as a respondent and the absence of the proof of the truancy violation by the students.
Letter to the editor concerning apology from Times of India and apology from Indian Express caption
Regret by the Times of India and the Indian Express caption
The High Court had said that the apologies published by the three newspapers on August 23 were not in bold letters or prominently placed, which was asked earlier.
Earlier this year it had allowed the publications time up to September 5 to come up with a new apology.
The High Court had on August 13 caused notices to be issued to the regional editors of three newspapers to show cause as to why they gave a ‘false and distorted narration’ of the proceedings of the court in the matter relating to rights of aided minority institutions.
The newspapers had subsequently tendered their apologies in their affidavits that were filed before the Court and the Court was dissatisfied with the same.
This was followed by a Bench led by Chief Justice CJ Sunita Agarwal delivering an order on August 22 which ordered that the newspapers should publish apologies unambiguously stating that both the reporter and the editor were in wrong in reporting the Court’s observations.
The same was done on August 23 which was followed by another similar action.
However, when the matter was taken up for hearing on Monday, the Bench said that those published as apologies were small.
On behalf of Times of India, Senior Advocate Devadatt Kamat accompanied by Advocate Ashish Verma appeared before the supreme court.
The appeal was filed by Tatini Basu, Advocate only to be rejected through her again.
