New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the Hindu Sena’s plea seeking a ban on BBC’s work in India along with a BBC documentary on the Gujarat riots.
The Supreme Court said that this petition is completely wrong. How can we place such an order? A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and M M Sundaresh dismissed the petition, saying there was no merit in the petition.
Advocate Pinky Anand, appearing for the petitioner, said that the BBC is running a campaign completely anti-India and against PM Modi. The court has the right to ban it.
The petition was filed on behalf of the Hindu Sena. In this, the Hindu Army demanded a ban on the functioning of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in India and a ban on the BBC in India.
Hindu Sena’s petition had said that the conspiracy of BBC to break the unity and integrity of India should be investigated by NIA and BBC should be banned in India.
However, earlier on February 3, the Supreme Court had issued notice to the Centre on a plea seeking a direction to the Central government to stop censoring the BBC documentary related to the 2002 Gujarat riots.
The supreme court has sought a response from the Centre within three weeks.
The apex court has asked the Centre to produce relevant records related to its decision to block the BBC documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’. The matter is now scheduled for hearing in April. Senior advocate C U Singh, appearing for senior journalist N Ram, TMC MP Mahua Moitra and advocate Prashant Bhushan, told the supreme court that this is a case where emergency powers were invoked without ordering in the public domain.
He said that tweets sharing links to the documentary have been blocked. On this, the Supreme Court said that we are seeking a file of the order related to this from the government and will examine it.