The Supreme Court has declined an urgent hearing of a petition against the promo of the movie “The Accidental Prime Minister”. The movie is a biopic on Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Prime Minister. As per reports, CJI stated that there will be no urgent hearing and the matter will be listed in due course.
#NewsAlert | SC declines urgent hearing of a petition against promo of ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’. CJI says matter will be listed in due course. | #AccidentalPMRow pic.twitter.com/dxA6WCczVm
— News18 (@CNNnews18) January 10, 2019
The movie featuring Anupam Kher in the lead has ruffled a lot of feathers. There have been numerous petitions filed in the Courts against the movie.
A Congress leader from Punjab had moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court to stall the release of the movie. On January 3, a lawyer named Sudhir Kumar Ojha filed a case against the actors of the movie for ‘damaging the image of some top people’. The case was filed in Muzaffarpur’s Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) court on January 3. Acting on which, the court had asked the police to launch FIR against Anupam Kher (portraying Manmohan Singh) and Akshay Khanna(portraying author of the book, Sanjaya Baru), along with 13 others.
A similar plea was also filed at Delhi High court by a fashion designer, Pooja Mahajan through lawyer Arun Mattri. The high court had rejected the plea and asked the petitioner to convert her plea into a PIL. Following which on 8 January a PIL was filed in the court, which was to be heard on January 9. However, the PIL also couldn’t make an effect and was rejected by the Delhi HC again. The court also questioned the locus of the petitioner. After that, the petitioner had moved to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi has adopted a stricter stance against PILs. In October 2018, a bench that included CJI Gogoi dismissed Prashant Bhushan’s petition seeking a stay on the deportation of Rohingyas. The same month, the Court had dismissed a petition by senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot seeking orders to the Election Commission to provide the draft voter list in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in text format. In December, the Court had imposed a fine of Rs. 50,000 on the petitioner for a frivolous PIL against Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
