Civil society members & journos move SC, express solidarity with Bhushan

NEW DELHI: Ten members of civil society, including Aruna Roy and Arundhati Roy, have moved the Supreme Court expressing solidarity with activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan who is facing contempt proceedings on attorney general K K Venugopal’s petition accusing him of making “false, malicious, dishonest and reckless” allegations on appointment of CBI’s interim director.

The Roy duo, along with Wajahat Habibullah, Harsh Mandher, Jayati Ghosh, Prabhat Patnaik, I P Singh, Shailesh Gandhi, Bezwada Wilson and Nikhil Dey, most of whom were represented by Bhushan in one case or the other before the SC, requested the court to make them parties in the contempt proceedings.

Terming Bhushan’s remarks appropriate in the context of the doubts that arose in the appointment of M Nageswar Rao as interim CBI director, they said in a joint application filed through Kamini Jaiswal, “The applicants would also like to intervene in the present contempt petition and face the consequences of this contempt, if any, along with Prashant Bhushan.”

“Any restraint on lawyers and litigants on commenting on pending court proceedings in matter of public interest would have a seriously deleterious impact on not merely the freedom of speech of lawyers and litigants but also on the right of people and civil society to be informed about pending court proceedings which are in public interest,” they added.

The civil society members were followed by noted journalists N Ram, Arun Shourie and Mrinal Pande and others who through Bhushan’s junior Pranav Sachdeva filed another application seeking to participate in the proceedings against Bhushan. “Barring media or anybody through media, from writing about or commenting about pending court proceedings would have the effect of depriving the people of information which they are entitled to know about court proceedings involving matters of public interest,” they said.

The SC had issued notice to Bhushan on Venugopal’s petition seeking to punish the activist lawyer for committing contempt by insinuating that the government fabricated the high-powered committee’s decision to authenticate Nageswar Rao’s appointment as interim CBI director.

The AG said Bhushan “deliberately intended to cast aspersions on the integrity and honesty of the AG, who had placed the minutes of the meeting before the SC”.