Court rejects petition to ‘terminate’ Dr. Farooq Abdullah’s LS membership
Expressing dissent against the government does not amount to sedition, the Supreme Court said Wednesday, rejecting a petition to “terminate” Dr. Farooq Abdullah’s Lok Sabha membership and register him for sedition.
“It cannot be said that the expression of a dissenting point of view of a decision taken by the Central Government itself is seditious,” the court said in its order.
A bank run by Judge Sanjay Kishan Kaul said there was nothing in Dr. Abdullah’s statement “that we find so offensive as to give a cause of action for a court to initiate proceedings.”
The court rejected the petition as a “clear case of publicity litigation” by petitioners who want their names to appear in the press.
The Court dismissed the case imposing costs on the petitioners in the amount of ₹ 50,000 to be deposited in the Supreme Court Defenders Welfare Fund in four weeks.
The accusation
Petitioner Rajat Sharma accused Dr. Abdullah, president of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, of stating that “in Kashmir Article 370 of the Constitution will be restored with the help of China” during a speech on September 24.
Mr. Sharma argued that Article 370 had been removed from the Constitution by a majority in Parliament.
“Everybody knows that there are only two countries in the world that are trying to seize the Indian part of Indian territories, namely China and Pakistan, which means that Farooq Abdullah is trying to hand over Kashmir to China or Pakistan, which is totally contrary to the provisions of the Constitution and amounts to sedition, ”says his petition.
.
