7 months ago
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The Jammu and Kashmir High Court connected Monday refused to contented announcement connected a nationalist involvement litigation (PIL) petition against the forfeiting of 25 books successful the national territory, but fixed December 4 arsenic the day of last hearing.
Hearing the PIL plea of CPI(M) person and Kulgam MLA M.Y. Tarigami, the Bench, comprising Chief Justice Arun Palli and Justices Rajnesh Oswal and Shahzad Azeem, said: “Most radical would not recognize the issue. How would you [Mr. Tarigami] cognize that each the radical are concerned? So, nary notices volition beryllium issued,” the Bench observed.
However, the Full Bench fixed December 4 arsenic the day of last hearing.
Advocate Vrinda Grover said she was “grateful to the court”. “I deliberation it has taken up the substance with the value and urgency it deserves. The tribunal has shown its intent to perceive and determine the substance finally,” counsel said.
The Jammu and Kashmir High Court’s Full Bench was constituted connected September 30 aft the Supreme Court directed each the petitioners to attack it.
In August this year, the Jammu and Kashmir Home department, nether Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, invoked Section 98 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 to categorise 25 books arsenic “forfeited for propagating mendacious communicative and secessionism.”
These included books by salient writers specified arsenic Christopher Snedden, A.G. Noorani, Radha Kumar, Sumantra Bose, Ayesha Jalal, Sugata Bose, Arundhati Roy, Stephen P Cohen, Anuradha Bhasin, Seema Qazi, David Devdas etc.
In his petition, Mr. Devdas told the tribunal that the forfeited enactment was published successful 2007 aft astir a decennary of painstaking probe and was launched by a former Governor of Jammu and Kashmir arsenic good arsenic erstwhile R&AW officer, who “highly praised it”. “There is successful information nary proximate nexus betwixt the contents of the petitioner’s enactment with immoderate incidental oregon disturbance that has occurred since 2007, erstwhile the enactment was archetypal published,” says Mr. Devdas’s petition.
The plea argued that “a vague, ambiguous and wide connection astir 25 books cannot in immoderate mode represent ‘grounds of opinion’, particularly successful specified a lawsuit which involves some superior penal consequences arsenic good arsenic curtailment of cardinal rights.”
