The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed a breach of privilege motion notice issued against writer and columnist Shobhaa De by the Maharashtra Assembly over her tweets against the State government’s direction to multiplexes to show Marathi films on prime time.
A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C. Pant took serious note of the fallout suffered by the writer for tweets expressing her views as a citizen in a democracy.
“It has never been so extreme in our country. All she is accused of tweets, she has been tweeting a lot and has been satirical,” senior advocate C.A. Sundaram, representing Ms. De, submitted.
The court asked the chairman, principal secretary and the Special Rights Committee of the Maharashtra Legislature Secretariat to file their responses within eight weeks.
