New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended interim protection to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanjay Singh and six other journalists charged with sedition from any coercive actions in the alleged hate speech cases. The top court stayed the arrest and sought quashing of the FIRs registered against them under charges, including that of sedition.
Hearing the plea against AAP leader Sanjay Singh in Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court said, “Uttar Pradesh cops are not precluded from seeking sanction from Rajya Sabha chairperson to prosecute MP Sanjay Singh in alleged hate speech cases.”
Participating in a discussion on a motion thanking the President for his address to the joint sitting of Parliament at the start of the Budget Session last week, Singh had said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been helping farmers who are protesting against the laws and would continue to do so in the future.
“This government works just for the benefit of their four corporate friends. This is a government of these four corporates from whom they take offerings to fight elections,” Singh said in Rajya Sabha.
Raising the issue through a zero hour mention on February 3, Digvijaya Singh of the Congress had said FIRs had been filed against politicians, journalists and civil society activists under felonious sections in the past few days.
Singh, along with three AAP MPs, were marshalled out of Rajya Sabha after they disrupted proceedings over the three contentious farm reform laws and refused to heed to Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu’s plea for order.
Charges of sedition, criminal intimidation, promoting enmity, provocation to break public peace, criminal conspiracy, outraging religious feelings, among others, have been invoked in the FIRs lodged at Gurgaon, Bengaluru and in different districts of Madhya Pradesh.