Coming down heavily on authoritarianism, the Supreme Court on Wednesday slammed Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa for using criminal defamation proceedings to silence criticism of her government ‘s functioning.
The apex court while issuing a notice to her also severely chastised her and said, “You can’t use defamation cases to throttle democracy. This is not done.” Earlier too, she had been rebuked in July for the same issue. The court also advised the Tamil Nadu government to concentrate on good governance and take criticism positively. The AIDMK supremo had filed a case against Rediff.com for reporting her health conditions through city public prosecutor ML Jegan.
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The petition was contested by DMDK chief A Vijaykanth while he sought to quash a defamation case filed by him by the Tamil Nadu government. The top court further said that “a government cannot be seen to use state machinery to file criminal defamation cases against political opponents.”
The next hearing of the case is scheduled on 22 September.
