New Delhi: The Supreme Court has approved the hearing on February 6 of the PILs filed against the central government’s ban on Prime Minister Modi’s 2002 Gujarat riots documentary ‘India – Questions for Modi’.
Before a bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, advocate PL Sharma and senior advocate CU Singh orally requested that their public interest petitions against the BBC documentary ban be heard as an urgent case. Taking this into consideration, the judges said that they will take up the petitions next week on Monday (February 6).
In a petition filed by lawyer ML Sharma, he said that the central government’s ban on the documentary ‘Questions for India – Modi’ is arbitrary and against the political system. Similarly, the petitions filed by senior journalist N. Ram and Prashant Bhushan regarding the deletion of Twitter posts with links to BBC documentary will also be taken up for hearing next Monday.
Senior advocate Chiu Singh, appearing for N. Ram and Prashant Bhushan, explained how the Twitter posts of the petitioners were deleted using emergency powers under the Information Technology Rules. He also said that students at Ajmer University in Rajasthan were suspended for watching a documentary on the background of then Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Earlier, Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002 when riots broke out. On the 17th, the British government media BBC released a documentary about this riot. The documentary, titled “India – Questions for Modi”, contains negative comments about Prime Minister Modi.
On the 18th, the central government banned the publication of the BBC’s documentary on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. However, comments related to the BBC documentary are being posted on social media. A link to the BBC documentary is also posted on social media. The central government also banned such social media posts. It is noteworthy that the Union Ministry of External Affairs had commented on this documentary as a propaganda film and a colonial mentality.
