On Wednesday, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta stated that the plea seeking consent to initiate contempt proceedings against actress Swara Bhaskar is “misconceived” as the same has been declined by Attorney General KK Venugopal.
The consent of either the Attorney General or the Solicitor General is necessary, under section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, for initiating contempt proceedings against a person. As per section 15 of Contempt of Courts Act, he declined his to grant his consent, to prosecute Ms. Bhaskar for her remarks over the Supreme Court. Attorney general in the letter dated 21.08.2020 had declined to provide his consent for the reasons stated in the reply. And by considering these facts the Ld. Attorney General for India has already declined to provide his consent, the present request to SG seems to be misconceived to him as he wrote in his letter to Advocate Anuj Saxena.
The petitioner had submitted that Ms. Bhaskar’s statements were not only a “cheap stunt of publicity” but also a deliberate attempt to turn masses to revolt against the Supreme Court. “The alleged contemnor statements intend to incite feeling of no-confidence amongst the public with respect to the proceedings of the Hon’ble Court and integrity of the Hon’ble Judges of the Apex Court of India”, states the petition filed by Adv. Anuj Saxena, Prakash Sharma & Mahek Maheshwari on behalf of Usha Shetty.
Further, the AG said that the second statement is a vague statement which is not related to any particular court and something which is so general that no one would take any serious note of this statement. He stated that according to him it is not a case of scandalizing of the court or lowering the authority of the court would arise.
