Whether the Supreme Court judgment quashing Section 66A of the IT Act is to be viewed as either ‘great’ or ‘landmark’ (“The ‘greatness’ of a ‘landmark’ judgment”, March 30), no purpose will be served if the government is armed with a similar vagueness of words under Article 19(2) of the Constitution. The term “reasonable restriction” reveals it all. Unless and until the ‘freedom of speech and expression’ is made an absolute human right, whether it is in the form of good, bad or ugly, on any platform, there is no meaning in Tagore’s expression, “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high … let my country awake”. The power to arrest a person or a group for having placed some material in the open must be taken away from the hands of the government. A quick justice delivery system is sure to bring in the desired results.
Victor Frank A.,
Chennai
In his article “ >The ‘greatness’ of a ‘landmark’ judgment ” (March 30), Peter Ronald deSouza states that the concepts of discussion, advocacy and incitement mentioned in the Supreme Court judgment on Section 66A of the IT Act do not protect free speech enough because the distinction between them is “inadequately executed”, and this could lead to situations where the “discussion” entered into by one can be used by another to “incite” simply by quoting the discussion and saying “this is what he has said”. This criticism is unjustified because the court was not deliberating on the absoluteness of freedom of speech or expression.
The subjectivity feared by the writer was addressed by the honourable judges when they made it clear (in paragraph 15) that any law that seeks to impose restrictions on free speech can “pass muster” if it is “proximately related to any of the eight subject matters set out in Article 19(2).” In other words, the court struck a perfect balance between the rights guaranteed in Article 19(1)(a) and 19(2), and invalidated Section 66A only because it violated Article 19(1)(a) and could not be saved by Article 19(2).
For this reason, it is a landmark judgment.
A. Faizur Rahman,
Chennai
