Foreigners as editors of Indian newspapers: Delhi High Court reserves verdict in PIL by Subramanian Swamy

The Delhi High Court today reserved its judgment in the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Dr. Subramanian Swamy (Dr. Subramanian Swamy v. The Registrar, Office of Registrar of Newspapers of India, WP(C) 2989/2013) seeking a direction that the editors of Indian news papers should be citizens of India..The matter was heard by a Division Bench of Justices Pradeep Nadrajog and V Kameswar Rao..Swamy, had contended that although Section 1 read with proviso to Section 5(8) of the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867 (Act) only mandated the editor to be a person “ordinarily resident” in India, the pending Press and Registration of Books and Publications Bill, 2011 (Bill) required the editor to be a citizen of India as well as an ordinary resident of the country. He had, therefore, contended that an omission in the statute can be inferred by the Court and can be rectified by resorting to the Doctrine of ‘Casus Omissus’ since the new Bill for enactment introduced in 2011 in Parliament was pending passage..In his written submissions, Swamy had stated that since the protection of Article 19(1)(a) was available only to Indian citizens, “foreign citizen editors cannot act as fearlessly in safeguarding the citizens’ right to information” as Indian editors. He had further contended that the readers’ Fundamental Right to Information and free expression would be prejudiced if the editor of a newspaper is a foreign citizen..When Swamy appeared in person today, the Court inquired whether he wanted the impugned provision of the Act to be quashed or not. However, Swamy said that he wanted a “purposive construction” of the relevant proviso and sought that the requirement of citizenship should be read into the proviso of Section 5 (8) of Act by the Court. The Court also thought this fit and proceeded to dictate the wordings of the proviso as it would stand amended if Swamy’s plea was accepted..Additional Solicitor General Rajeeve Mehra, who represented the Union Government, contended that this was not a fit case for “purposive construction” considering the fact that a Bill to give effect to the prayer made by Swamy was pending passage by the Parliament. Swamy, however, rebutted Mehra’s argument by saying that the Bill had been pending since 2011 and it was not wise to wait for the Parliament to pass a law..The Court, after hearing the parties, reserved its judgment..Swamy had, in this petition, also challenged the foreign citizenship of The Hindu’s previous editor Siddharth Varadarajan. However, since Varadarajan had resigned from The Hindu, the issue was no longer considered leaving the Court to decide the larger issue of “purposive construction” of the relevant provision of the Act..Image Taken from here.